Character portraits for the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child were released over the weekend and they are all lovely; take a look on Pottermore. As we reported in December of last year, Olivier-Award winning actor, Noma Dumezweni, was cast as Hermione in this production. After the announcement, people with nothing better to do complained to the Twitterverse about her casting. The issue was not her credentials but the fact that she is not white and that somehow flies in the face of the characterization of Hermione. At the time, J.K. Rowling gave the following statement in support of the casting choice:
Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Hermione ? https://t.co/5fKX4InjTH
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 21, 2015
JK wrote the story upon which Jack Thorne’s play is based. HPatCC takes place 19 years after the gang has graduated Hogwarts. Harry is married with three children and the youngest, Albus, is reluctant to carry on the family legacy. The story is a continuation from the books, not the movies so it really doesn’t matter who played the part in the movie, even if they did a wonderful job in that role. Now that the dust up on social media has died down, JK expressed her annoyance about the controversy and did so in classic JK fashion.
JK Rowling has revealed her frustration at online reaction by “a bunch of racists” to news that the role of Hermione will be played by a black actress in the eagerly awaited new play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
The production, which has broken records by selling 175,000 tickets in 24 hours, is tipped to be the theatrical event of the year. But the Harry Potter creator criticised those who have suggested that Hogwarts’ studious heroine could not be played by the Olivier-award-winning actress Noma Dumezweni.
“With my experience of social media, I thought that idiots were going to idiot,” she said in an interview with the Observer. “But what can you say? That’s the way the world is. Noma was chosen because she was the best actress for the job.”
While the vast majority of people responded positively to the casting decision, Rowling said: “I had a bunch of racists telling me that because Hermione ‘turned white’ – that is, lost colour from her face after a shock – that she must be a white woman, which I have a great deal of difficulty with. But I decided not to get too agitated about it and simply state quite firmly that Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm.”
Dumezweni was cast by the play’s director, John Tiffany – known for the productions Black Watch and the musical Once – who has collaborated with Rowling and the playwright Jack Thorne, writer of This Is England and The Last Panthers.
Tiffany said he was surprised by the opinions expressed online, but had stopped reading the comments. “I am not as Twitter-familiar as Jo and Jack, so I hadn’t encountered its dark side, which is just awful. But what shocked me was the way people couldn’t visualise a non-white person as the hero of a story. It’s therefore brilliant that this has happened.”
I always cast books in my head and producers never go with my picks when they are made into movies. Shockingly, I am able to get over it and see the film without bias. I remain at a loss over the criticism of Noma; I would be thrilled to see someone of her caliber perform. Elphaba in Wicked needed to be green, it was a huge point in the story but Hermione’s skin color has no affect on her. I think I’ll save my outrage for the fact that I will never get tickets to this show and not the fact that Hermione is not alabaster or Ron not-ginger enough.
Photo credit: WENN and Fame/Flynet Photos and Getty Images
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