Alan Rickman is one of the most successful casting decisions in the entire ‘Harry Potter’ saga. The actor from ‘Die Hard’ or ‘Love Actually’ was about to leave his role as Severus Snape if it weren’t for the fact that the author of the books revealed the true destiny of her character.
This article contains spoilers for the ‘Harry Potter’ saga.
the real snape
The ‘Harry Potter’ movies started in 2001, when the book saga was not yet fully published. As they commented in ‘Harry Potter: Return to Hogwarts’, none of the actors had information about the future of the characters except for one person.
“Only Rickman knew,” Daniel Radcliffe declared. The actor explained that Rickman wanted to know about the future of his character and asked JK Rowling directly.. After meeting him, the actor never told anyone and kept it a secret until it was finally revealed.
Rickman’s interest in knowing Snape’s future came when the actor he was considering leaving the role because he felt it was “nothing more than an invariable costume”. She must have been convinced by the author’s explanations, since she finally decided to stay until the end:
It helped me see that he was more complex and that the story was not going to be as linear as everyone thought.
In the saga, Snape is initially presented as a clearly antagonistic figure to Harry and even appears to be a traitor at one point. However, in the end he turns out to be one of the heroes of the story, a covert ally who took great risks for the love of Lily Potter. Definitely, the Wizarding World would not have been the same without Alan Rickman’s Snape.
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