The news that Tom Felton is to reprise the part of Hogwarts villain Draco Malfoy in the Broadway run of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has led some to wonder whether the “curse” in the title might, in fact, apply to the 37-year-old actor.
Alone among the Harry Potter cast who achieved mega-fame while still of school-going age in the early 2000s, there is a sense Felton is trapped in the Potterverse, never to escape. It’s as if the grudge-bearing Draco has taken his ultimate vengeance not on sworn enemy Harry but on the actor who played Malfoy, condemning him to be eternally synonymous with a character he first portrayed at age 12.
That is in contrast with the original bespectacled boy wizard, Daniel Radcliffe, who recently made a point of ruling himself out of participating in the new HBO reboot of Potter. He has said that, while he will be “very happy to just watch along with everyone else”, he has no desire to potter back to Harry. Similarly, Emma Watson has indicated she has little interest in encoring as Hermione Grainger. Felton has the Quidditch pitch to himself.
Given the eagerness of the rest of the cast to move on, Felton’s willingness to go back to where it all started could be seen as a tragic admission that life post-Potter has been a cursed chalice for the actor. It’s not as if he didn’t try to break free. After the final Harry Potter movie, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a grown-up acting career. However, apart from Rise of the Planet of the Apes – in which he played a minor villain named Dodge Landon – Hollywood has proved indifferent to his charms. The internet has taken his return to Draco – Cursed Child revisits the baddie in unhappy middle age – as an admission that Potter will forever define him.
Felton was just 13 in the first Harry Potter film (Photo: Warner Bros Pictures/Manuel Harlan/PA Wire)But instead of pitying Felton, perhaps we should commend him for having the humility to acknowledge his place in the greater scheme. It isn’t as if Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint or Emma Watson have gone on to conquer Hollywood. Lest we forget – you can bet he hasn’t – Radcliffe’s major post-Harry role of note was playing a dead body in the dark comedy Swiss Army Man.
Radcliffe, Watson and Grint remain every bit as connected to Harry Potter as their former colleague. The difference is that Felton appears to be at peace with the fact. He isn’t running away from the defining event of his life: that surely has to be a good thing?
The paradox in all this is that, of all the cast, Felton was the one least attached to the world of JK Rowling when he auditioned for that first Chris Columbus movie, 2001’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
square HARRY POTTER Child fame is a curse - I fear for Harry Potter's new cast
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He would recall attending an open casting session crammed with Harry Potter fans, and it dawning on him that he was probably the only one there who hadn’t read the books. Nor was he a first-timer hoping for his big break. By the time he entered the Wizarding World, he was already an experienced actor, having previously appeared in Anna and the King and The Borrowers. So far as it can be said of a 12-year-old, he was an old hand at this – which is probably why he got cast as Draco, he suspected.
“I reckon I got the part because I was nonchalant,” Felton said several years ago, “and had no idea what anyone was on about. Wizards in cupboards under the stairs? And with three older brothers, you learn to be confident quickly. I think Chris Columbus […] recognised this slight disinterest and arrogance in me, which he thought could work for Malfoy.”
There was a sense that this was just another job for him. Maybe that remains the case now. He also surely appreciates that there are things more important in life than whether Harry Potter diehards on X think you’re a bit sad. In his 2022 memoir, Beyond the Wand, Felton talked about how his drinking had brought him to a dark place and that he had become someone whom his friends didn’t recognise.
Once you’ve navigated challenges like that, your career takes on a different perspective. Harry Potter is the stuff of life itself to many of its fans – but with Felton, you get the impression that it is, first and foremost, a paying gig. Given how fast fame came at him and how profoundly it changed his life, his ability to accept Draco Malfoy as a blessing rather than a curse might just be the greatest conjuring trick of all.
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