There has been a longstanding rumor that has circulated in the Wizarding World that Robin Williams wanted to be in the Harry Potter movies but was turned down.
I wanted to dive deeper on this for my Harry Potter facts from the source series as there seems to be a lot of misinformation out there. Robin Williams being passed over for Hagrid is a commonly shared fact but how true is it? What I did was look into it deeper and try to find as many first-hand sources as possible to clear things up. So let’s get into it.
Let’s start with the main factor here. Robin Williams is not British and there is a longstanding rumor that J.K Rowling wanted the movie producers to use only British actors for the roles.
Janet Hirshenson was the casting director for the Sorcerer’s Stone movie. In an interview, Hirshenson confirms there was a directive that all of the main actors had to be British, and confirms the rumors that Robin Williams was rejected because of this rule. .
Here is a direct quote from the article from the Huffington Post;
“Robin [Williams] had called [Chris Columbus] 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,” said the casting director. “It couldn’t be.”
Hirshenson doesn’t specifically mention the role of Hagrid in this quote but there is a side note in the Huffington Post article that says:
“Hirshenson said Robbie Coltrane was author J.K. Rowling’s first choice to play Hagrid, anyway.”
There is an interview with Robin Williams himself with the New York Post in 2001 that addresses this rumor. I was not able to find this article online first-hand, but his quotes are attributed from multiple places. This includes The Guardian, which highlights this quote from Williams from that New York Post article:
“There were a couple of parts I would have wanted to play, but there was a ban on American actors”
This is an interesting quote as Williams doesn’t say he only wanted to play the role of Hagrid but says he wanted to play multiple roles. So the rumor of Hagrid does seem to be accurate but it is not the full story.
Director Chris Columbus, who was the director or producer of the first three films, was interviewed by Games Radar and said:
“I had a conversation with Robin Williams, who wanted to play Lupin. It was very difficult for me to say ‘It’s all British. There’s nothing I can do.’” What could have been…”
So in this interview, Columbus says that Williams wanted to play the role of Remus Lupin, who didn’t show up until Prisoner of Azkaban. So it seems like Williams was so invested in joining the series that he didn’t take the initial Hagrid no and give up. He continued to try and join the cast later on.
My speculation from all this is that Robin reached out to Chris Columbus after the news came out that he was directing the first film, as he was a fan of the series. Robin and Chris worked together in Mrs. Doubtfire, which came out in 1993, so the connection makes sense. Robin probably pitched himself in the role of Hagrid. Chris probably wanted Williams in the film (in any role) but since the producers wanted to hire British actors, he couldn’t hire him but kept the door open in the future. Robin probably reached out again for the second film and then for the role of Lupin as well in the third film.