How Robin Williams Nearly Joined the Hary Potter World

Every massive franchise has its great what if. Fans love to imagine the version that almost happened, the one where a single choice sends a story on a slightly different path. With Harry Potter, that alternate timeline has a particularly irresistible star at its center.

The idea sounds like a prank your friend would whisper in a cinema line. Robin Williams at Hogwarts. Not as a cameo tucked into the background, but as a character that mattered. It was closer than most people realize, and the reason it never happened says a lot about how the films protected their world.

When casting began, the team held fast to a guiding principle. The faces and voices of the wizarding world needed to feel born of Britain. Director Chris Columbus later put it plainly. “Jo Rowling and myself said to each other when we first met, ‘Look, we want this cast to be 100% British.’ And by the way, I stuck to that.”

That stance collided with the enthusiasm of one of the most beloved American performers. Williams reached out and made his case. Casting director Janet Hirshenson remembered the call and the rule that stood in the way. “Robin had called because he really wanted to be in the movie, but it was a British-only edict, and once he said no to Robin, he wasn’t going to say yes to anybody else, that’s for sure. It couldn’t be.”

Reports have long tied Williams to two roles that would have suited his gift for warmth and melancholy. Rubeus Hagrid was one. Years later, Columbus also acknowledged that Williams had interest in Remus Lupin. He admired what might have been and also backed the choice the films made. “It would have been a different interpretation. I thought David Thewlis was great. But Robin would have been brilliant.”

Williams himself spoke about the roadblock back when the first film arrived. He did not sound bitter so much as rueful and amused. “There were a couple of parts I would have wanted to play, but there was a ban on [using] American actors.” He even tossed out a cheeky workaround. “Maybe one day. Say if [Harry] goes to Yale and becomes president.”

It is easy to picture what he might have brought. Hagrid with a twinkle that masks real ache. Lupin with a classroom smile that fades to something more fragile by the fire. Yet the films chose a single accent for their dream and kept it. That consistency helped the world feel like a place you could map without leaving Britain.

The almost casting now lives where good movie lore belongs. It adds a layer to the story without changing it. Robbie Coltrane made Hagrid feel like home. David Thewlis gave Lupin a softness that lingers. And somewhere in the great hall of might have beens, Williams is still cracking a shy grin as the candles float above.