The Harry Potter fandom already has a track record of abusing Black talent who take on parts originally imagined as white: During Noma Dumezweni’s two-year run as Hermione Granger in the West End and Broadway productions of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the actor saw a barrage of hate tweets and racist harassment directed at her in a now familiar pattern by stans. #Notmyhermione started trending, and Potterheads threw their toys out the pram simply because the part wasn’t being played by a white woman like it had been in the films.
There are countless examples of this kind of response to castings in fictional, often fantastical works: Ncuti Gatwa in Doctor Who, Leah Sava Jeffries in Percy Jackson and the Olympians. John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran in Star Wars. Regé-Jean Page, Simone Ashley, Charithra Chandran and Victor Alli in Bridgerton.
Magic isn’t real, wizards and Stormtroopers do not exist, and Bridgerton‘s narrative handling of racism is intentionally anachronistic — and yet still, Black and brown and Asian people being a part of the fantasy is the most unbelievable part.
One of the first widespread racialized hate campaigns to gain media attention began in online fandom spaces and targeted a 13-year-old Amandla Stenberg, who starred in the first Hunger Games film as Rue (and who would later receive similar harassment for her role in The Acolyte). When her casting news broke, fans of the books came forward and made it known that they had no interest in feeling sympathy for a Black girl killed in the Games. “Call me racist but when I found out Rue was black her death wasn’t as sad #ihatemyself,” one now-infamous tweet read.
It doesn’t matter if Rue is explicitly stated in the source material as having “dark brown skin”; even Hollywood’s colorist choice to cast a mixed-race actress to play the character was still too far for them. This idea that audiences cannot emotionally connect with non-white actors runs rampant in these racist harassment campaigns. In their mind, every character worth idealizing or feeling sympathy for is white because they, the viewers, are white — how can they self-insert into these stories and live vicariously through these people if they do not look like them?
If the death of a Black child in real life does not move them; why would it make them feel sympathy for an imagined child?
Leah Jeffries is one of a few Black actors whose team has come forward and actively defend her from the racist attacks; Rick Riordan — the author of the original series — took to the blog he uses to communicate with fans and outright condemn the racism his young cast were facing, explicitly stating that anyone who had a problem with this diverse cast should take it up with him personally.
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Condemning racism is the bare minimum, but it is a noteworthy instance, because so often, even the bare minimum is not met. What truly makes this Snape casting difficult to stomach, though, isn’t just knowing how fans react when these characters are race bent. It’s knowing which character specifically Essiedu is setting out to play.
