Harry Potter HBO series season 2 cast: Wormtail's son is Arthur Weasley — and Moaning Myrtle isn't 36 this time
The Chamber of Secrets casting board is filling up, and the Weasley family portrait now contains a detail that will delight one very specific rat.
HBO's Harry Potter series has cast its Arthur Weasley: Rafe Spall, the Trying and Life of Pi actor, will play the wizarding world's most enthusiastic Muggle-plug collector when season 2 — adapting Chamber of Secrets — shoots this fall at Leavesden.
The franchise inheritance writes itself: Rafe is the son of Timothy Spall, who spent four of the original films as Peter Pettigrew — the traitor who hid in the Weasley household for twelve years disguised as Ron's pet rat, Scabbers. Wormtail's son now runs that household. Somebody at HBO casting knew exactly what they were doing. And the Burrow's sitcom credentials hold up too: Molly Weasley is played by Katherine Parkinson, forever Jen Barber of The IT Crowd, the woman who once presented "the Internet" to a shareholders' meeting in a black box.
Myrtle, age-appropriate at last
The other headline casting fixes a two-decade-old quirk. Molly Hewitt-Richards — a young actress with credits in Code of Silence and Casualty — will play Moaning Myrtle, the ghost of a teenage girl who haunts the second-floor bathroom. In the 2002 film, teenage Myrtle was played by Shirley Henderson, then in her late thirties — a beloved performance and also, canonically, a 36-year-old woman in pigtails. The reboot is going with an actual teenager, which is somehow the most radical creative decision announced so far.
The rest of the round, per the trades:
- Jasper Ambrose as Colin Creevey, first-year, camera permanently raised
- Kit Harington as Gilderoy Lockhart — reportedly stepping in after Nicholas Hoult fell out over scheduling
- Lenny Rush as Dobby, Billy Barratt as Tom Riddle, Bonnie Hill as Ginny Weasley
- The Weasley bench: Alastair Stout (Ron) plus Tristan and Gabriel Harland as Fred and George and Ruari Spooner as Percy
Meanwhile, season 1 is a Christmas present
None of this airs soon. Season 1 — with Dominic McLaughlin's Harry, John Lithgow's Dumbledore, Paapa Essiedu's Snape, and Nick Frost's Hagrid — premieres on HBO on Christmas Day, December 25. HBO's stated plan remains one book per season across a decade, which puts this Arthur Weasley in employment through roughly 2033. The flying Ford Anglia, presumably, is being negotiated separately.
Previously we wrote: Below Netflix release date and trailer: Jaws meets The Thing, with Josh Hartnett and Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton as father and son
