‘Harry Potter’ Series Star Paapa Essiedu Says He’s Received Death Threats Over Snape Casting: ‘I’ve Been Told, “Quit or I’ll Murder You”’

Pretty disgusting to send death threats over an acting job. 

Nothing against him but the casting is atrocious and problematic. The fact that rich kids Sirius and James will immediately choose to dislike and bully the only black major character in the series.. Bro they literally undress him and hang him upside down from a tree in Book 5. YIKES.

The casting director set this man up as a lamb at the slaughter…

It's an extremely stupid casting choice. But threatening anyone over it is insane and evil. If you don't like it, just don't watch it.

Really bad reaction from people putting in death threats. His casting is however completely tone deaf and misses the mark completely.

Average Harry Potter Adult reaction.

He is terribly cast seemingly for no reason other than to generate clickbait and interest, but there’s no reason to threaten his life.

My sympathies to him but this is such an impossible lose lose lose scenario. People are pissed for him taking a role and putting money in JK Rowling’s pocket. People are going to hold you to Alan Rickman’s performance. AND there’s a batch of loud terminally online psychos out there who hate you just for being black Good for him he can just put his head down, put in the work and this will all be over soon. Oh right. This is going to take minimum SEVEN YEARS of his life. Godspeed

Having Snape played like a black guy kinda makes Harry and his Dad come off as pretty racist. Harry’s dad relentlessly bullies Snape, and Harry immediately judges Snape as looking evil

Biggest lose-lose scenario I’ve ever seen lol. Get flamed for working on a TERF-ip, follow up a breathtaking performance by Alan Rickman, and also deal with haters who are correctly annoyed that Snape is supposed to be a greasy, lanky, generally unlikable white incel-type character.

I’m not making any judgements until I see it, but gosh I would have loved to see Adam driver as Snape

It’s bad casting to stir up shit but the guy doesn’t deserve to be threatened at all.

It’s awful the harassment this actor will receive but it is hard to argue the point that this is entirely self-inflicted from HBO/Warner/Essiedu. No one asked or expected the recast, Essiedu could have said no. I’m normally all for a recast but this character is literally written to be a certain way and they’ve gone out of their way to go this direction. I don’t endorse any such threats or comments but they are absolute idiots if they didn’t think this would happen. Edit - Thought it was pretty obvious by “recast” I meant switching the race of the character. I dont quite see how people thought I meant either they weren’t going to recast Rickman or the character wouldn’t be in at all.

Obviously awful that he’s receiving threats, people are awful/psychos On a side note probably the dumbest casting of All time. Outside of James and company bullying him can’t wait for Harry and the gang to just not like snape, doubt his intentions and not trust him on feelings for some reason. Compared to the other teachers 😂. Wonder how that will look. Also a more important side note what a stupid series to make. We already have the movies. This is going to re cover so much in arguably a worse way. Should have made a series of students in the American school for magic or something.

So let me get this straight. They took a character famous for his pale, sallow complexion....and cast a black man to play him? That's...definitely a choice.

We really need to stop giving credibility to every single mentally ill person with access to the internet

Casting him cursed the whole damn thing. Straight up.

I hate to say it but there's always going to be crazy people saying stupid shit on the Internet. I imagine someone everyone widely accepts is awesome/ beloved like Betty White was for example, I guarantee you she also had people saying stupid shit like this

I don't like the casting either but I ain't going to jail for it lol

In my opinion i dont see why they need to remake it at all but people need to chill out. Its a work of fiction. 

This is disgusting. I say that as someone who also didn't agree with the casting, but have nothing against the actor whatsoever. I don't think he should have been cast as Snape, because it fundamentally alters the character. Being a pale, pasty, greasy, ugly loser is key to the character. Basically any other character in the series could have been race switched other than Snape and it would be fine. It's going to add a completely different ugly slant to the scene where James and Sirius and them torment Snape which was never intended. But sending death threats over it is the ultimate in deranged behaviour. I hate this all around.

Cool. They take the .05% of the internet and act like everyone is threatening him. Everyone in the spotlight goes through this. Welcome to the internet 20 years ago.

Look, nobody deserves death threats but honestly, I blame Warner Bros and HBO for this. Fans can be unhinged, we've known this for a while so why go ahead with a casting choice that genuinely seems like it was done to purposely spite fans? It doesnt feel fair to Paapa either. Also, I know this might be an unpopular opinion but I'm genuinely against race-blind casting for characters as popular as Snape, mainly because I truly believe the visual look and aesthetic of a character is as important to their iconography as their core personality tenets and I wish people would stop pretending like they aren't all that important. Not to mention the level of abuse the actor hired for the part inevitably receives. Add to that, any discussion around the performance of the actor is now bound to be unbearable - if you genuinely like his performance, you're now branded 'woke' and if you genuinely dislike his performance, you're now a 'racist'. Its the simplest solution to this problem - Cast actors who look like the character as described in the source material. I honestly dont know why this is such a bad thing.

I just hate what this casting implies for the characters backstory. This is a character whose partial worldview as shaped when he was beaten up by some boys for flirting with a girl. I'm gonna assume that James Potter and his boys are gonna be all white. As we all know, a bunch of white teens bullying and sneering a black teen definitely doesn't conjure up anything.

I have become quite the sceptic when I see claims of death-threats. ~10 years ago a relative worked for a PR firm, one of her duties was keeping an array of fake social media personas going and looking legit. When a client needed to change a narrative they would burn a couple of personas and make some 'death threat' screenshots. And then that company could jump online and say 'whatever our differences, death threats are bad!!'. Nicely switching away from any of the original bad press. They probably use AI for that now. Did this dude receive death threats for the bad casting? Maybe. Will I doubt the legitimacy of every claim I see? Absolutely. It's a PR tool now.

While I condone bullshit like this I seriously have to ask why the guy accepted this role. There is no way he didn't know what the reaction would be like. Yes, yes, the answer is money, isn't it.

My issue with his casting is that he's too good looking. Snape is more of an incel looking person

I don't agree with this but why are they race swapping characters in harry potter? They keep doing stupid shit like this and are surprised people get mad? how would people react if we rebooted a character like Blade and made him a white man?

Fandoms genuinely ruin everything. It’s like Star Wars fans attacking the cast because they didn’t like the sequels. Actual weirdos.

Threatening someone over the internet for something like this is idiotic. At the same time I’d riot if they recast black panther as a white dude, and to me this kind of hits the same. I wouldn’t actually care if I hadn’t watched the movies, but I’ve built memories with the character so frankly anyone too different from Alan Rickman would be immersion breaking to me. Same goes for any other character I’ve watched and grown fond of. It would be the same if they recast Luke Cage as a white dude, or Amanadiel from Lucifer. Imagine if they recast Filius Flitwick as a tall person! That’d be even worse to be honest. But the point is that consistency is key.

Can't wait for the white gang to be constantly suspicious of Snape - without having evidence - and essentially treating him like a criminal. That will be a good look for Potter

f*** the racists but what a horrible casting choice given what would transpire in the book.

That’s so incredibly fucked up… but so is the casting. James and Sirius literally bully tf out of Snape in the book…. How is it going to look when two white guys bully the black guy?? Kinda adding a layer to that storyline that really doesn’t need to be there. They were assholes to Snape, and now they are going to be racist assholes.. which really redefines those characters. It doesn’t matter how good of an actor this guy is, and that’s fucked up to say but it’s the truth. This casting is easily the worst decision ever made in the history of showbiz. I feel so bad for this guy because the casting directors literally set him up for failure.

I gotta be honest, on a venn diagram with two sets: "people who care so much about Harry potter they would send death threats over casting" and "people to be scared of"....there is zero intersection.

I mean it’s not his fault the big wigs behind it are stupid.

I have a feeling this show isn't going to be good

It's the internet, even I received death threats over the years.

Bad casting. But sending death threats over it is absolutely insane.

Lucy Bevan and Emily Brockmann Those 2 dumbasses are to blame.

Death threats are insane...it's a kids show. I do understand frustration though, I mean...if they had recast a black role as white everyone would be up in arms.