Papa Essiedu as Snape? Let's Talk About Why This Feels Off

The Snape Dilemma: It's Not About Race, It's About the Character

Let’s get this straight right off the bat: this isn’t about race. It’s about Snape.

When news broke that Papa Essiedu, a talented Black actor, was cast to play Severus Snape in the upcoming Harry Potter TV reboot, my initial reaction wasn’t anger. It was sadness. Disappointment. That quiet gut-feeling that something wasn’t sitting right.

Not because I don’t support diverse casting. Quite the opposite. I believe in broad, inclusive representation on screen. We need more of it. But sometimes—especially in deeply character-driven stories—changing a character’s core visual and symbolic identity without adapting the context around it feels less like evolution, and more like a disservice to both the story and the actor.

Let’s break it down.

Snape's Look Wasn't Cosmetic — It Was Symbolic

J.K. Rowling didn’t just throw together a description for fun. Snape’s pale skin, greasy black hair, hooked nose, and hollow face weren’t aesthetic choices—they were narrative tools. He was designed to look like a shadow, a ghost in the corridors. A man who didn’t quite belong in the light.

His appearance is referenced constantly—always lurking, always in black, always in the dark. It reflects his place in the story. An outcast. A man with a secret. A mirror of shame and regret. Someone who doesn’t fit, and knows it.

Change that visual—and you don’t just change how he looks. You shift what he represents.

A Broken Promise to Stay True to the Books

When HBO announced the new Harry Potter series, they promised us something fans have been begging for: a faithful adaptation. A do-over that digs deeper into the books’ nuance, characters, and storylines that the movies skimmed over.

That promise built trust. Especially among longtime readers who felt the films glossed over Snape’s tragic complexity. And then—bam. The first major casting choice for one of the most iconic characters already feels like a betrayal of that trust.

If you're going to reimagine the look of such a foundational character, you'd better reimagine the context too. And right now, there’s no sign that’s happening.

Not All Change Is Progress

Here’s where it gets messy. Representation is crucial. But when diversity is slapped onto an existing character just to check a box, it becomes tokenism, not progress.

Instead of building new, powerful, well-developed Black characters in the Wizarding World (which it desperately needs), we’re getting “the Black Snape.” And that reduces the actor. It turns a powerful performance into a conversation about identity politics rather than letting the character speak for themselves.

Worse, it invites backlash—and not just from “haters.” It alienates fans who genuinely love the character and want to see him done justice. The actor gets caught in the crossfire. And no one wins.

Snape's Context Matters — A Lot

Let’s not forget: Snape isn’t marginalized because of his race. He’s marginalized because he’s poor. Awkward. Socially isolated. Brilliant, but unwanted. Bullied for his background and personality, not the color of his skin.

And that’s exactly why he sought acceptance among the Death Eaters—a group of elitist, pure-blood supremacists. Snape, though not one of them by blood or status, looked like he could be. That tension—belonging on the outside, but not on the inside—is powerful. That’s what made his story so raw.

But if Snape is visibly Black in a world like this, it shifts the entire dynamic:

• Would Voldemort’s racially elitist inner circle have accepted him at all?
• Would James Potter and Sirius Black’s bullying now read as racially motivated, even unintentionally?
• Would Lily’s rejection carry an entirely different cultural weight?
• Would Snape’s interactions with Harry take on darker, racial undertones?

You can’t just change how a character looks and pretend the world around them reacts the same. It fundamentally alters the story.

This Isn't About "Keeping Snape White." It's About Keeping Snape... Snape.

When you change something as foundational as a character’s appearance—without adjusting the world they live in—you don’t get the same character with a new face.

You get a new character entirely.

And that’s okay—if that’s what the story is trying to do. But that’s not what’s happening here. The series isn’t saying “we’re reimagining Snape in a new context.” It’s saying “this is the same Snape you love, just with a different actor.”

And for a lot of us, that doesn’t track.

Because at some point, when too much changes, we lose what made that character them in the first place. And it’s not about gatekeeping. It’s about preserving the emotional, psychological, and symbolic threads that connect a character to their story.

It's Not About Backward Thinking — It's About Story Integrity

Snape isn’t defined by his skin color. But he is defined by the way he was written. By the tension between who he appears to be and who he really is. By how the world sees him, and how he sees himself. That’s delicate. And that deserves to be handled with care—not rewritten with a casting change and no narrative adjustment.

It’s not about being against representation. It’s about doing it right.

Create new, unforgettable Black wizards. Tell their stories with depth and power. Just don’t overwrite a character like Snape without acknowledging what made him unforgettable in the first place.

Because once you do that...

It’s just not Snape anymore.

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