John Lithgow is preparing to play Albus Dumbledore in the new Harry Potter TV series. The actor recently told Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett on the Smartless podcast that he’s “halfway through the second” novel right now as he’s “behind everybody” when it comes to knowledge of the Harry Potter franchise. That said, Lithgow doesn’t think the job will be “that hard.“
“The overall concept of this entire reboot of Harry Potter is an entire season is devoted to a single novel,” Lithgow said. “You know, Dumbledore is — he’s kind of the nuclear weapon. He only goes on very, very occasionally. I don’t think it’s gonna be that hard a job, and, we’ll just go back and forth.“
When asked about the filming schedule, Lithgow said, “I honestly don’t know. I mean, I was in England for eight months for The Crown and barely came back [to the U.S.]. I think I may have come back once or twice. I imagine that I can come back much more.” Although the ink on his contract has barely dried, Lithgow said that he’s already being stopped by people about the role. I’m sure you haven’t seen anything yet.
As for Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, upwards of 32,000 kids have auditioned for the roles, and the selection process is still ongoing. Succession‘s Francesca Gardiner will serve as a writer and showrunner on the series, while Mark Mylod signed on to executive produce and direct multiple episodes. The project was originally developed for Max but made the leap to HBO (along with a variety of other Max shows) last summer.
Each season of the Harry Potter TV series is said to cover one of J.K. Rowling’s novels, for a total of seven seasons. While the movies were able to fit quite a lot in, there were plenty of moments cut from the novels that the TV series will finally be able to bring to life. Last year, the studio released a statement saying, “Each season will be authentic to the original books and bring Harry Potter and these incredible adventures to new audiences around the world, while the original, classic and beloved films will remain at the core of the franchise and available to watch globally.” Production is expected to kick off this summer.
