JK Rowling defends Noma Dumezwni as Hermione Granger

JK Rowling has defended the decision to cast black actress Noma Dumezwni as Hermione Granger in the upcoming West End stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The author addressed the hate and criticism, telling The Guardian that the actress is “the best for the job.”

Rowling’s frustration was displayed as she said: “With my experience of social media, I thought that idiots were going to idiot,” she said in an interview with the Observer. “But what can you say? That’s the way the world is. Noma was chosen because she was the best actress for the job.”

She continued: “I had a bunch of racists telling me that because Hermione ‘turned white’ – that is, lost colour from her face after a shock – that she must be a white woman, which I have a great deal of difficulty with. But I decided not to get too agitated about it and simply state quite firmly that Hermione can be a black woman with my absolute blessing and enthusiasm.”

John Tiffany, the play’s director who cast Noma, also had something to say on the matter: “I am not as Twitter-familiar as Jo and Jack, so I hadn’t encountered its dark side, which is just awful. But what shocked me was the way people couldn’t visualise a non-white person as the hero of a story. It’s therefore brilliant that this has happened.”

People have been commenting on the casting as well as Rowling’s defence of it. User Nick Bullen said: “Harry Potter fans are upset that the actress playing Hermione is black not because they are racists, its for continuity sake. Hermione was portrayed as white in the first 8 movies and then all of a sudden she is black. So Rowling decides to call all of her fans racists because they value consistency.”

Another user commented: “I love the Harry Potter books, but Rowling herself has been guilty of racism against First Nations. In her “History of Magic in North America” posts on Pottermore, she created such stereotypical “nature magic” Native American wizards that Native Americans themselves called her out for treating them only as one-dimensional stereotypes and not as real people. As for Hermione, the fact is that Rowling describes her as “pale” more than once in the books, and she allowed Hermione to be illustrated as white on the book covers. I really don’t care if she is portrayed by a black actress, but it’s a bit silly to pretend now that she was never conceived as a white character.”

Regardless of the racial and character change issues, the play has already broken records by selling 175,000 tickets in 24 hours and is tipped to be the top event this year within theatre.