Jared Harris has spoken about how his father, the late actor Richard Harris, was once offered the roles of two wizard characters at the same time.
Richard famously played Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in the first two films based on JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books.
Following his death in 2002, he was replaced as Dumbledore by Michael Gambon, who took on the role in the remaining six films.
In 2022, a feature documentary titled The Ghost of Richard Harris, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, contained the revelation that Richard was also offered the role of Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
However, he opted for the role of Dumbledore and the Gandalf part went instead to Ian McKellen.
Speaking to The Times, his son and fellow actor Jared spoke about his father’s legacy and revealed why he turned down Gandalf.
“Dad was offered Gandalf and Dumbledore at the same time, but he didn’t want to spend all that time in New Zealand [where the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed],” he said.
Jared added that he believes his father’s Dumbledore had a more “mischievous comic touch” than Gambon’s.
McKellen was in fact offered the role of Dumbledore after Richard’s death, but revealed in a 2017 interview that the fellow actor made a remark about him, Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Brannagh.
“These guys [are] technically brilliant, but passionless,” Richard Harris stated.
“When they called me up and said would I be interested in being in the ‘Harry Potter’ films, they didn’t say in what part,” McKellen said on the BBC’s HARDtalk with Stephen Sackur.
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“I worked out what they were thinking, and I couldn’t … I couldn’t take over the part from an actor who I’d known didn’t approve of me.”
Jared said Mark Rylance, with whom he starred in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet in 1989, would make a “wonderful” Dumbledore in the forthcoming TV adaptation of Harry Potter.
“He’s a phenomenal actor,’ he said. “I saw that they’re thinking about him as a possible Dumbledore. He would be wonderful because there’s already something otherworldly about him.”
It was announced in 2023 that JK Rowling’s bestselling wizard-themed books were being made into a new series, having previously been adapted into a hit film franchise between 2001 and 2011.
The move has been criticised by some fans of the books, with many deeming another adaptation “unneccessary”.
As of October 2024, casting was still underway. In an interview with The Independent last year, Harris said he would say “no” were he asked to take on the role of Dumbledore.
