Fans of the Harry Potter films were left puzzled after actor David Thewlis shared an Instagram post that purported to explain his absence at a recent high-profile cast reunion, but raised questions about whether he was ‘trolling’.
While most of the main players from the movie franchise reunited for the ‘Return to Hogwarts’ 20th anniversary special event on Saturday, several notable faces, including creator and author J.K. Rowling and Thewlis, were conspicuous by their absence.
In a post on Sunday, Thewlis – who portrayed the fan-favorite character, Remus Lupin – claimed that he had been “banned from any future Potter celebrations” after “foolishly [posting] what I thought was an amusing picture of a Lupin action figure to which I had attached some comically large feet” last year.
“It seems I did this on a sensitive anniversary, upsetting many. This led to an enormous number of fans (and some cast members) taking to the streets in protest and signing a petition demanding” the ban, wrote Thewlis, adding that the offending picture had been his “wife’s idea.”
To apparently preempt online sleuths from scouring his social media accounts, Thewlis noted that the ill-advised post “has since been removed” on the “advice of [his] legal team.” The British actor ended the message with the hope that he had “cleared things up” for those speculating about his absence.
However, the post appears to have had the opposite effect – with the apparent ‘joke’ going “over the head(s)” of many commenters while more hard-to-please sections of the fanbase continued to insist there was a deeper meaning behind his non-attendance.
In a reddit thread spawned by Thewlis’s post, some users pointed to his statement as having “confirmed suspicions” about “something ... going on behind the scenes” of the reunion show. A number of people tied his comments to Rowling’s absence – widely thought to be over the main cast’s opposition to her critical views on trans rights and gender identity discourse.
But others noted that the post was simply a send-up of ‘cancel culture’ using “dry English humor” with one user writing that Thewlis’s “absurdist and totally dorky” sense of humor is why “he was born to be Lupin.”