Fans of the Harry Potter series are eagerly awaiting the next installment, The Cursed Child, which opens as a play in London, but Potter creator J.K. Rowling has harsh words for some Potter fans who don’t approve of her casting choices.
In The Cursed Child, Noma Dumezweni, a black actress will play Hermione Granger, who fans are used to seeing depicted as white (in the movies by Emma Watson). Some on social media have a problem with the change, and lashed out. Rowling insisted that Hermione’s race is never definitively stated in the books, and is now calling fans who object to Dumezweni’s casting racist.
“Noma was chosen because she was the best actress for the job,” Rowling told The Guardian. “I had a bunch of racists telling me that because Hermione ‘turned white’ – that is, lost color from her face after a shock – that she must be a white woman, which I have a great deal of difficulty with.”
Rowling may be engaging in a bit of revisionist history: initial character sketches for Hermione depict her as a white girl (though they also depict her as half the size of companion Ron Weasley), and Hermione is routinely referenced in the books as “pale.” But given that casting is subjective, Rowling is well within her rights to change her characters — even cast them as minorities (a la Hamilton) — as she see’s fit, across canon.
But just as the character is open to Rowling’s interpretation, so is it open to fans’. With Hermione only vaguely described — “brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever” — book readers are free to develop the character in their own mind.
Calling hardcore fans “racist,” seems a bit harsh.
