Twitter users may have lashed out after black actress Noma Dumezweni was cast as Hermione Granger in the upcoming London play, "Harry Potter and The Cursed Child," but actor Alfred Enoch supports the casting choice.
Enoch, who played fellow Gryffindor Dean Thomas in the "Harry Potter" film series, sat down with HuffPost Live to discuss the return of "How to Get Away with Murder" and weighed in on the uproar over the casting of the Swaziland-born English actress.
"What I want to celebrate and be mindful of is that it can be a nice thing when you see things that are different, unexpected [or] surprising," Enoch told host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani. "And in that specific case, I think the issue is that it's not normative, maybe because of this weight of pop culture. What we see on TV and films and books present a certain perspective to a greater degree than another."
Although Enoch admitted that he originally envisioned Granger's character to be white, there's no reason that the character can't be played by a person of color, he said.
"I assumed Hermione was white, but there's nothing saying she can't be black. Great. Let's have a black actress who's fantastic playing the part! That's exciting for me," he said.
He's not the only one who's glad to see the "Harry Potter" casting process breaking the mold. Since Dumezweni's role was announced, both J.K. Rowling and Emma Watson have also voiced their support for the actress.
Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Alfred Enoch here.
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