The series’ Snape says he didn’t understand Deathly Hallows
Paapa Essiedu, who plays Severus Snape in HBO’s Harry Potter series, has admitted that he read Deathly Hallows so quickly that he still does not really know what happens in it, and that Dumbledore’s death left him baffled. He said it in an interview with Chris Murphy for Vanity Fair, published on 10 November 2026.
“I still don’t think I really know what happens in Deathly Hallows because I read it so quickly that it didn’t really seep in. I was like, ‘This shit is complicated as hell, man. Dumbledore’s dead? What the fuck?’”— Paapa Essiedu, Vanity Fair
Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape. Image © HBO.
The book that explains Snape
Of the seven books, Deathly Hallows is the one that matters most for Snape. In “The Prince’s Tale” (ch. 33), Harry sees Snape’s memories and learns the truth about him: that he had loved Harry’s mother, Lily, since they were children, that he had spent years protecting Harry for her sake, and that he killed Dumbledore because Dumbledore, who was already dying, had asked him to. It is the chapter that turns the character upside down, and it is in the book Essiedu says did not sink in.
The death that confused him
Dumbledore’s death does not happen in Deathly Hallows. It is the climax of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: at the top of the Astronomy Tower (“The Lightning-Struck Tower”, ch. 27), Dumbledore pleads with Snape, and Snape kills him. In other words, the death that baffled Essiedu is one his own character commits.
He did not watch the films either
Essiedu read the books to prepare for the role and chose not to watch the films: “To be honest, I never watched the movies when I was younger,” he told Vanity Fair. He has only a passing familiarity with Alan Rickman’s Snape, but said he is not trying to make anyone forget it: “The guy is an icon. He’s a legend.”
He did grow up with the books, which he said “were coming out regularly at the precise time that I was starting to develop my taste for literature”.
What he plans for Snape
With one book per season, the series has far more time than the films. Essiedu hopes “to pull the contradictions and the unexpected masks of Severus so that eventually we get a human being that is fully fleshed [out] and living and breathing”, and added that viewers can judge him “in 2039 or whatever it is”.
The showrunner, Francesca Gardiner, said the part needs someone who can suggest “a whole other story unfolding beneath the one you’re watching”. That story is exactly the one told in Deathly Hallows.
To fans who feel the series is taking something from them, he said:
“I’m not trying to break anybody’s nothing. After this, we’re not going to burn the books. We’re not going to remove the DVDs of the films. It’s not the end of that. That all still exists.”— Paapa Essiedu, Vanity Fair
Snape in the first season
In Philosopher’s Stone, Harry first sees Snape at the staff table on his first night, “a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose and sallow skin” (ch. 7), and spends the whole book sure that Snape is after the Stone. Vanity Fair, which has seen the first two episodes, says they include about 30 seconds of Snape.
How the books describe him, the differences seen so far and the official images are on his character page. For who played each character in the films, see the series cast against the films.
