HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’ Show Casts Harry, Hermione And Ron

After casting the majority of the adult characters in HBO’s upcoming, controversial Harry Potter series, it has just cast its child actors who will obviously need to be internet-guarded to high heaven in the current online climate.

The actors are:

• Dominic McLaughlin as Harry Potter
• Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger
• Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley

The three unknown actors are after a search of tens of thousands in an audition process to find the right cast. Here’s a statement about that from showrunner Francesca Gardiner and executive producer and director Mark Mylod:

“After an extraordinary search led by casting directors Lucy Bevan and Emily Brockmann, we are delighted to announce we have found our Harry, Hermione, and Ron. The talent of these three unique actors is wonderful to behold, and we cannot wait for the world to witness their magic together onscreen. We would like to thank all the tens of thousands of children who auditioned. It’s been a real pleasure to discover the plethora of young talent out there.”

Almost no information about the actors has been given out yet, which is probably for the best. Of them, only McLaughlin has an IMDB credit for a project that isn’t out yet, the other two don’t have pages at all. It is likely the case they are all close to the age of 11 as is the case with book trio and how old the OG cast were when they arrived.

There have been some amount of nerves about what would happen when Hermione Granger was cast and she turned out to be a black actress. JK Rowling has said in the past Hermione “could” be black and her skin color was never specified, and she was portrayed as black in the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage play.

Not that anyone should speculate on people’s race, but this is the modern internet, and unfortunately Arabella Stanton is instantly being put under a microscope for…looking mildly not white? Maybe? We already see speculation based on her name (Arabella might be…Greek? Stanton is…English?), but again, this is why these kids are going to need to be protected from what is no doubt going to be an awful internet discourse.

A totally separate issue is whether the show should exist at all, re-doing a series of wildly popular moves as an HBO series that is likely to span at least seven seasons and likely more than a decade in total given the seasonal gaps between shows. But this is WB and Harry Potter is a multi-billion dollar franchise, so here we are. We still have some key casting left to go (Voldemort, for one) but almost all the huge roles are cast now after this.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.