Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton and Alastair Stout have just been cast as Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, stars of an upcoming HBO series that will turn Harry Potter into a seven season TV show. The three children are, at maximum, 11 years old, and their lives will never be the same again.
The new Golden Trio (Potterhead parlance for the three main characters) have debuted into a very different media landscape to the one Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint experienced back in 2001. But almost 25 years later, it’s not exactly a better time to be a child star in a behemoth of a franchise.
Let’s be clear. The media in general did not cover itself in glory the first time around, slavering for these tweens to go off the rails. Watson in particular was treated abhorrently by the mainstream press. She was just 10 years old when she landed the role, and as she grew up in the public eye the papers cultivated a sadistic and invasive attitude to her body. There was a revolting incident when she was 17 over a poster for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that appeared to have enhanced her breasts.
On the night of her 18th birthday party, Watson recalls paparazzo lying in wait to take upskirt photographs of her. “Photographers laid down on the pavement and took photographs up my skirt, which were then published on the front of the English tabloids the next morning,” she said in a speech for her UN campaign HeforShe. “If they had published the photographs 24 hours earlier they would have been illegal, but because I had just turned 18 they were legal."
Radcliffe also suffered immensely in the limelight, developing an alcohol problem in an attempt to cope with the endless scrutiny. “The quickest way to forget about the fact that you’re being watched is to get very drunk,” he told The Independent. While he never drank on the Harry Potter set, he would “turn up to work still drunk”. “I can point to many scenes where I’m just gone,” he said. “Dead behind the eyes.” What a dereliction of duty of care that the films’ title star was allowed to suffer so.
Grint, too, struggled with the weight of such an all-consuming role — and not just because the scriptwriters did his character so dirty. “I lost track of who I was and who the character was,” he said during the HBO reunion show Return To Hogwarts. “Even my name didn't really feel like my name. I felt like I only knew how to do one thing. I knew how to play Ron." At the time when most teenagers are learning who they are in the world, these roles can consume their whole identity.
Fame on that scale would be hard for an adult to have processed. How can children be expected to manage that level of dehumanising attention, the collapsing between the self and a cult character? Hitting puberty is bad enough without the whole world waiting for you to make a misstep. And while the grosser celebrity-hounding sensationalism that defined the Noughties may have gone bust, now every fan on the street is armed with a camera phone.
Fandoms have also become increasingly powerful — and toxic
Being so tied to one character is often not beneficial to a young actor’s career, either. Watson did go on to play a Disney princess, but has now stepped back from acting. Grint only occasionally acts these days. Radcliffe has carved an admirable career as a character actor in niche films — something I’d call the Twilight approach, after how Bella and Edward’s actors Kristian Stewart and Robert Patterson divested from franchise topping fame to pursue more arthouse films. Of that era, it’s really only The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen, Jennifer Lawrence, who has managed to fully shed the association, going on to more blockbuster success and Academy Awards.
Fandoms have also become increasingly powerful — and toxic. Adult fans have a lot of disposable income to spend on cinema tickets (which are expensive these days), merchandise, and theme parks. They also don’t always behave well on the internet. Look at how Bella Ramsey is currently being treated by fans of The Last of Us video games. Or how the young stars of the Star Wars sequel trilogy were appallingly treated. Daisy Ridley had to quit Instagram over the harassment she faced, much of it sexist, while John Boyega was frequently the target of racial abuse. Fan is a truncation of fanatic, and in the febrile atmosphere of online platforms it doesn’t take much to spark a torrent of hate at a public figure.
Then, there is the hippogriff in the room. Harry Potter author JK Rowling, worth an estimated £945 million, has dedicated her online profile to single-issue campaigning against trans women. Her views, and the company she keeps, could politely be described as controversial, although I agree with Pedro Pascal on this one. Radcliffe, Watson and Grint have made unequivocal statements in support of trans rights, and Rowling seems displeased with this. The adults who have already been cast have also come under scrutiny for their decision to tie their careers to a franchise that is associated with its creator’s views.
HBO CEO Casey Bloys has been emphatic that, while she is executive producer on the series, Rowling’s political views are entirely her own and will not “secretly infuse” Harry Potter. “If you want to debate her, you can go on Twitter,” Bloys suggested. Which is all well and good, but these debates are frequent, nasty, and personal. Grown adults are allowed to beef on social media all they like, but it’s an unpleasant environment and three children must be protected the crossfire.
We can only hope that McLaughlin, Stanton and Stout have a strong support network, and that HBO will do its utmost to protect its three young stars. Ideally, they’ll keep off social media, and we in the press will attempt more grace this time around. But I worry for them. Harry Potter may open a world of magic to them, but it may also be a curse.
India Block is a London Standard columnist
