As it turns out, Robin Williams asked for a part in the Harry Potter series, but Warner Bros. turned him down. Why? Read on.
How’s this for an alternate reality? Back when Warner Bros. was casting 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, actor Robin Williams (Aladdin, Good Will Hunting, Mrs. Doubtfire—the ’90s, basically) asked to play Rubeus Hagrid, Hogwarts’ enormous, kindly groundskeeper.
Obviously, he didn’t get the part. Instead, it went to Robbie Coltrane, reportedly J.K. Rowling’s first choice for the role.
So why didn’t Warner Bros. hand over the role of Hagrid to a big star like Williams? Harry Potter casting director Janet Hirshenson revealed all to The Huffington Post:
"Robin [Williams] had called [director Chris Columbus] because he really wanted to be in the movie, but it was a British-only edict, and once he said no to Robin, he wasn’t going to say yes to anybody else, that’s for sure. It couldn’t be."
Williams alluded to this rejection when talking to the New York Post in 2001: “There were a couple of parts I would have wanted to play, but there was a ban on [using] American actors.”
The Hagrid that could have been. Image: Good Morning, Vietnam/Touchstone Pictures
So Warner Bros. turned Williams down because he wasn’t British, which…fair enough. If the Harry Potter series is anything, it’s British down to its bones, so it makes sense that the studio wanted to draw from an exclusively English acting pool.
Still, I think Williams could have done a fine job as Hagrid. He would have been good at displaying the character’s kindness and vulnerability, although at this point it’s hard to imagine anyone but Coltrane in the role.
Did the world miss out by not seeing Robin Williams’ take on Hagrid? Discuss.
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h/t The Guardian