"I felt insulted": this Harry Potter actress did not return after the first film

Corentin Palanchini

–Head of Infotainment

Passionate about Hollywood cinema from the 10s to the 70s, he follows with interest the current evolution of the 7th Art industry, and watches everything that passes before his eyes: French comedy, thriller from the 90s, Palme d’or forgotten or films of the moment. And with the time he has left, series.

A Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone actress opens up about why she never returned to the saga after the first film. Playing a Professor at Hogwarts, she felt “insulted”.

How to wrinkle with a studio in one lesson? Ask for more money! A supporting role in Harry Potter at the Sorcerer’s Stone paid the price. Claiming what she felt was a fair wage for a franchise of this magnitude, this actress was simply ignored by the studio and never able to return after that feature debut.

It’s actress Zoë Wanamaker, best known for playing Rolanda Hooch, the broom teacher and Quidditch referee at Hogwarts. A theaterwoman and figure in British television (notably with the comedy series My Tribe, in which she played for 116 episodes), Wanamaker told the Telegraph in 2001, after the release of the first film in the saga:

Some actors signed contracts for three films, but there was so little money that I felt insulted and only signed for one. If they wanted me for a sequel, they were going to have to revise their numbers.

We know the rest: the actress was not called back for any of the following parts (yet there are 7) and Professor Hooch (Rolanda Hooch in VO) never returned to the film saga, not even as from another actress.

Wanamaker will however resume service (vocally) for video games Harry Potter: Mystery at Hogwarts, released in 2018, in which the player embodies a student of the famous school during his 7 years of lessons, and chronologically before Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

In the novels, Professor Hooch is regularly present, even in the room Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, in which she still appears as a teacher at Hogwarts. On screen, however, she will never have the face of Zoë Wanamaker again.

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