Trailer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RnyZgfN-JY
HBO has cast three more faces for its Harry Potter series, and each belongs to a character the story has spent most of its history keeping tactfully out of shot. Harry Gilby is Charlie Weasley, Jasper Talbot is James Potter and Hannah Chinn is Lily Potter, all for season one’s Philosopher’s Stone, which lands on Christmas Day on HBO and, in the UK and Ireland, HBO Max.
Charlie first, being the Weasley the films mislaid. The second-eldest son spent the cinema version as a throwaway line about dragons in Romania and a blur in a holiday snapshot in Chamber of Secrets. HBO teased his arrival last August with a post saying he was currently in Romania but would be along very soon. Fourteen months is a long delay, though the man works with dragons and the paperwork must be extensive.
What Charlie is actually for in season one, the release doesn’t say, so this is guesswork. But the first book has a dragon-smuggling subplot, run by Charlie’s friends, that the films dropped, and eight episodes leave plenty of room to put it back. One suspects there’s more to the job than the family portrait.
The Potters are a different sort of casting. James and Lily are the story’s great absentees: dead before chapter one and yet running the plot from a photograph, a mirror and everybody else’s memory. Adrian Rawlins and Geraldine Somerville played them in the films. The obvious home for the new pair in Philosopher’s Stone is the Mirror of Erised, still among the most efficient ways ever devised to make a grown reader cry. One write-up of the latest trailer also spotted what appear to be flashback glimpses of them. Hagrid has already told Harry in a teaser that his parents were kind and brave, so somebody now has to prove it. Whether those shots feature Talbot and Chinn, HBO isn’t saying.
The press release, in time-honoured fashion, gives us the actors’ agents rather than their credits: Independent Talent Group and Untitled Entertainment for Gilby, United Agents for Talbot, and 42 for Chinn. We know who to ring but not what they’ve done, so we’ll hold our opinions. The production is now carrying a Harry who isn’t Harry and, with Jasper Ambrose due as Colin Creevey in season two, a pair of Jaspers. It’s a wonder anyone finds their mark.
That leaves Bill, the eldest, who in the books is off in Egypt breaking curses for Gringotts and in this release is nowhere to be seen. Given HBO’s way with Weasleys, he has probably been cast twice already and nobody’s mentioned it.
Join the conversation (0)