HBO continues assembling the second season of the new «Harry Potter», which will be based on «The Chamber of Secrets», and this week it announced several new names at once. The most interesting addition is Molly Hewitt-Richards as Moaning Myrtle.
And this is where the casting really deserves a special mention.
Myrtle is a very specific character: at once funny, touchy, tragic, clingy and a little absurd. She died while still a schoolgirl and remained forever a teenage ghost who took up residence in a Hogwarts toilet. So for the role it matters not so much to make the heroine «beautiful» or striking as to find a face in which one immediately reads vulnerability, oddness and character.
Molly Hewitt-Richards already has all of that visually. And if HBO keeps Myrtle as she is in the book — emotional, capricious and utterly unpredictable — the choice may turn out to be one of those cases when you see an actress for the first time and think: «Well, yes. There she is».
It is also a chance to bring Myrtle closer to her book image. In the original films she was superbly played by Shirley Henderson, but the new adaptation clearly more often tries to cast performers so that the age and appearance of the characters are closer to the books.
But Myrtle is not the only news.
Arthur Weasley will be played by Rafe Spall, familiar from Life of Pi, The Big Short, Trying and other projects. And here there is a wonderful detail for fans of the franchise: his father, Timothy Spall, played Peter Pettigrew — Wormtail — in the old films.
It comes out almost symbolic: the father once played the man who betrayed the Potters, and the son will now become the head of the family that effectively takes Harry in as one of their own.
Also joining the second season is Jasper Ambrose as Colin Creevey — a first-year student with a camera and practically boundless enthusiasm for Harry Potter.
Other important characters have already been announced for the second season: Lenny Rush will become Dobby, Billy Barratt — the young Tom Riddle, and the role of Gilderoy Lockhart has gone to Kit Harington.
So «The Chamber of Secrets» is beginning to take on faces, and for now it is Moaning Myrtle that looks especially interesting.
Sometimes a casting choice needs to be mulled over for a long time.
And sometimes it is enough to look at an actress — and you already hear somewhere in a Hogwarts toilet:
«Everyone forgot about Myrtle…»
