Here's a twist just in time for Halloween.
HBO Max has cast a cisgender male actor who made waves for playing a 14-year-old trans athlete in its new Harry Potter television series.
The irony is that since 2020, the creator of the upcoming series and its books, films and plays is of course J.K. Rowling, who has used her public platform to publicly speak out against trans equality, creating a legal fund last year to support “women’s sex-based rights.”
The new actor to join the cast is Harry Gilby, 25, who according to IMDB, already has 13 roles under his belt including playing the gay King Aethelstan in The Last Kingdom and its sequel, The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die, in 2022 and 2023.
GIlby is perhaps best known for playing a young J. R. R. Tolkien in the film Tolkien in 2019. But what's making headlines today is his portrayal of Charlie Lyndsay, a closeted trans girl with a special talent for playing soccer in Just Charlie in 2017.
Gilby's portrayal of Charlie earned him two nominations for Most Promising Newcomer at the 2017 British Independent Film Awards and Best Newcomer at the 2018 National Film Awards UK.
The actor from Nottingham began his career in 2013 when he played the role of Nathan in the original cast of London’s West End show, The Full Monty. In 2016, he made his television debut after landing a role as a Village Lad in an episode of the period drama series Jericho.
Now he's been announced as the second actor to portray Charlie Weasley, who Potter fans know was the second oldest brother in the wizarding family. According to the best-selling books by the controversial author and anti-trans activist, Charlie was born to Molly and Arthur Weasley after Bill, whose siblings also include Percy, Fred, George, Ron, and Ginny.
But the character in the movies was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it part, seen only for just over one second of 2004’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,
As The Independent reported, actor and model Alex Crockford played Charlie for that brief moment, appearing in a photograph of the Weasley family on holiday in Egypt that is shown in a newspaper. The character of Charlie never made another appearance.
In a message on social media to congratulate his successor, Crockford wrote: “Aaaah. The moment has come to pass on the dragon-wrangling kit to the new guy! Congratulations sir, and I hope you get more screen time than I did (the record to beat is 1.5 seconds!) #jenesuispascharlieanymore.”
As Mathew Rodriguez reported for Them, Rowling's net worth was estimated to be worth one billion U.S. dollars by The Times this year. She has used her vast fortune to fund anti-trans initiatives. The J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund, created in 2025, is intended to bankroll cisgender women who are “fighting to retain women’s and girls’ sex-based rights in all aspects of life including the workplace, sports and clubs, and protected single-sex spaces,” according to its website.
Rowling also reportedly donated about $88,000 to the anti-trans advocacy group For Women Scotland as they brought a historic case to the U.K. Supreme Court, in which the judicial body ruled that the legal definitions of “man” and “woman” in the U.K. would be based strictly on biological sex.
Outrage over those actions led to a protest earlier this month in which masked, pro-trans rights demonstrators stormed the red carpet at a gala performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London’s West End.
As Deadline reported, the new Potter series is written and executive produced by Francesca Gardiner and is executive produced by Rowling, as well as by Neil Blair, and Ruth Kenley-Letts of Brontë Film and TV, David Heyman of Heyday Films, Laura Neal, and Jon Brown.
Variety reports the first season of the Harry Potter TV show premieres on HBO on Dec. 25. The second season, based on the second book in J.K. Rowling’s beloved fantasy series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, is currently filming at Leavesden Studios outside London.
