Say what you will about Paapa Essiedu, but he is a millennial at heart. The I May Destroy You and Gangs of London actor is a little over a month out from the premiere of HBO’s adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, meaning it’s time to start talking Snape, which is easy for him to do when he was a childhood Potter fan. In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Essiedu discussed his interest in the series starting at a young age, explaining that Rowling’s books were “coming out regularly at the precise time that I was starting to develop my taste for literature.” In all the conversations about whom, exactly, the new Potter series is for, perhaps we’ve forgotten that there’s a whole host of millennial actors who, having grown up with the books and original films, now want the opportunity to star in the adaptations themselves, even if playing a teacher might make them feel old, as Essiedu jokes that it does.
At an expanded eight episodes — a little less than six hours longer than the initial Chris Columbus–directed adaptation of the first Potter novel — the first season of Harry Potter looks aggressively too faithful, but for Essiedu’s casting, which caused controversy around its initial announcement due to the actor’s race and previously expressed support for the trans community. In the lead-up to the show’s premiere, Essiedu maintains that support. “I believe, in my bones, that trans people, queer people, people of all creeds and color have got the right to be treated with respect and dignity and safety at all times,” he says. That there’s an inherent contradiction to what he believes and the ways in which Rowling has used her profits from the series to fund anti-trans legislation — the support for which some have called “trans genocide” — is the unfortunate reality of the Potter series going forward, but Essiedu believes these themes are what make Potter such a rich text. “Themes of forgiveness, and good triumphing over evil, and of accepting people for who they are and allowing people to really be themselves within a world where anything is possible” is what he believes the books’ lingering legacy is. Allowing people to be themselves in a world where anything is possible is a great theme — one that its author might want to take into account.
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