Gary Oldman, who played Sirius Black in four “Harry Potter” movies, said he believes HBO’s forthcoming TV series adaptation set in the Wizarding World will be a bigger crowd-pleaser than the Warner Bros. films.
That’s because the movies were significantly abridged from J.K. Rowling’s original books, whereas HBO’s “Harry Potter” is including far more of the source material, the British actor said in a recent interview with EW.
“We had to cut a lot [for the ‘Harry Potter’ movies], and still we could only get the films down to, like, three hours,” Oldman said, adding that “a lot of character detail was sacrificed” in the process. “I believe [the HBO series is] gonna do it pretty much word-for-word, which I think, as a viewer, would be more satisfying.”
Oldman has previously opined that Sirius Black, a character he loves, did not get enough screen time in the movies. “He wasn’t in it enough. He turned up and then he went through the veil,” Oldman told IndieWire in 2024. Oldman’s Black first appeared in 2004’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” but he had only cameos in “Goblet of Fire” and “Deathly Hallows Part 2″ and a brief appearance in “Order of the Phoenix” before his character is killed off.
That said, Oldman told EW he is “proud” and “grateful” to have been part of the “Harry Potter” films “because it is such a phenomenon, the like of which I don’t think you’re ever gonna see again.”
“When you think of that initial cast, someone in the story who doesn’t get a lot of credit anymore is [director] Chris Columbus, who set the world up and cast it,” he said. “We were extraordinarily lucky to have those people come back again, and again, and again, and literally grow into those roles.”
Oldman will next appear in Season 6 of Apple TV’s “Slow Horses,” which premieres Sept. 16.
Season 1 of HBO’s “Harry Potter” TV show has wrapped and will premiere on HBO and HBO Max on Dec. 25. The second season, which will be based on the second book in Rowling’s beloved fantasy series, is currently in pre-production at Leavesden Studios outside London.
HBO has not announced casting for the role of Sirius Black in the series to this point. The cast of HBO’s “Harry Potter” series includes Dominic McLaughlin in the title role alongside Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger and Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley; John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore; Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall; Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape; Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid; Rory Wilmot as Neville Longbottom; and Lox Pratt as Draco Malfoy.
Meanwhile, Oldman once said that his performance as Sirius Black in the movies was “mediocre,” but he later clarified that he didn’t mean to “disparage anyone out there who are fans of ‘Harry Potter’ and the films and the character who I think is much beloved.”
“What I meant by that is, as any artist or any actor or painter, you are always hypercritical of your own work,” he told Variety in 2024. “If you’re not, and you’re satisfied with what you’re doing, that would be death to me. If I watched a performance of myself and thought, ‘My God, I’m fantastic in this,’ that would be a sad day.”