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The new Harry, Hermione and Ron talk to Scholastic News
Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton and Alastair Stout, who play Harry, Hermione and Ron in HBO’s Harry Potter series, have given a joint interview to Scholastic News, the classroom magazine of Scholastic, the American publisher of the books. The two-page article, “A new crew of wizards” by Nicole Tocco, appears in the issue dated 23 November 2026, a month before the series premieres on 25 December.
“A new crew of wizards”, Scholastic News, 23 November 2026. © Scholastic.
Playing such well-known characters
Asked how it feels to play characters so many readers love, Arabella Stanton said it is “pretty cool” to bring a new version of Hermione to life. Alastair Stout admitted to the pressure: they are only the second actors to play the trio on screen, after Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, and he wondered whether he was going to do it right. He said he wants to bring Ron to life in his own way.
The auditions
Dominic McLaughlin described the auditions as fun, nerve-racking at times but never overwhelming, and said he made friends there that he is still in touch with. He also found it a bit strange to be in a room full of other Harrys, Rons and Hermiones, though it made it easy to size up the competition.
The day they got the parts
McLaughlin was with his father when he found out, and said neither of them knew what to say. “It still doesn’t” feel real, he added. Stanton called the moment “surreal”, and Stout said he was shaking: “It felt like a dream.”
A stunt on the chessboard
Stout’s most memorable moment of filming was a stunt in which he was flung backward from a chessboard. He compared the build-up to the top of a roller coaster.
That is almost certainly the giant chessboard at the end of Philosopher’s Stone. In “Through the Trapdoor” (ch. 16), Harry, Ron and Hermione must play their way across a life-size wizard’s chess set, and Ron, playing as a knight, lets himself be taken so that Harry can win: the white queen strikes him with her stone arm, he falls to the floor and is dragged off the board. If the series follows the book, the scene will come near the end of the season. See the episode guide for which chapters each episode is likely to cover.
More of the books than the films had
Asked what she could say about the series, Stanton said it includes material from the books that was not in the films, goes into much more detail and spends more time with the characters. “I think big fans of the books are really going to enjoy that,” she said. With one book per season, the series has eight episodes for Philosopher’s Stone, where the film had two and a half hours; the scenes from the books that were left out of the film are listed on the differences page.
Why Harry Potter lasts
McLaughlin said the books appeal to people of all ages, with themes everyone can relate to, such as happiness, sadness, fear, love and grief, and readers grow up alongside the characters. Stanton added that the books get better and more thrilling as the story goes on.
Scholastic News notes that the interviews were edited and condensed. For more about each actor and how the books describe their characters, see Harry, Hermione and Ron, and the series cast against the films.
