Game of Thrones star Kit Harrington (Eternals, Pompeii) will fill in as the charismatic and mendacious Gilderoy Lockhart in season two of HBO’s Harry Potter series, The Hollywood Reporter states. The news comes less than two weeks after it was originally reported that Nicholas Hoult (The Great, Superman) had been tapped to portray the character.
Per Deadline, Hoult was unable to commit to the role of Lockhart due to his commitments on another Warner Bros. project: Man of Tomorrow, where the English-born actor will reprise his role as the bald-faced supervillain Lex Luthor from James Gunn’s Superman. Gunn has previously indicated that Man of Tomorrow will be Luthor’s movie as much as it is the Man of Steel’s, making Hoult near-irreplacable within the screenplay. Lockhart’s presence, meanwhile, is relegated to handful of scenes within Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; as such, for Warner Bros., releasing the actor from his Potter contract seems like the obvious decision.
Some fans have speculated that Hoult’s departure from Harry Potter also has a political dimension to it. Numerous actors involved in the HBO series have faced scrutiny from representatives of the LGBTQ+ community due to the franchise’s association with its author J.K. Rowling, who, among other pursuits, has used her profits from the Wizarding World to fund trans-exclusionary legislation and advocacy within the United Kingdom. Until anyone involved says otherwise, though, claims that Hoult’s decision was motivated by the backlash he received remain largely unfounded.
Harrington’s portrayal of Lockhart is also technically a reprisal; last year, according to Deadline, he played the character in Harry Potter: The Full-Cast Audio Editions, the most recent audiobook iteration of the series. In an interview, Harrington joked that he had felt a kindred spirit in the duplicitous Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, who, without spoiling too much, is something of an in-universe celebrity himself. “I think there’s a little bit of Gilderoy in all of us,” the actor stated.
Season one of the Harry Potter series, entitled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, will premiere this Christmas on HBO Max. Season two is slated to begin filming this autumn.