Is Alan Rickman’s performance as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter film series still in our minds, after all this time? Always.
Snape might just be one of the most misunderstood anti-heroes in the history of fiction, but what Rickman did with the character in the live-action adaptation pushed the tight-lipped, flat-stared professor beyond even his literary counterpart, turning it into a timeless performance that’s still celebrated to this date.
It’s been seven years since Rickman tragically passed away due to pancreatic cancer, yet his legacy lives on. His Harry Potter co-star Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) recently sat down in an episode of Michael Rosenbaum’s YouTube podcast and discussed what it was like to work with the talented thespian.
When asked if she found Snape intimidating, Wright said:
“He was so Snape, you know, he wanted us to fear him. He did a very good job at it. But you can tell that he was kind of having fun with it too. When I had the confidence to speak to him, he was such a soft and lovely human being.”
You can watch the relevant section of the interview for yourself at around the 37:00 mark in this video.
You simply can’t watch the “Prince’s Tale” sequence in Harry Potter and not break down crying. And I mean ugly crying. That alone is a testament to Snape’s compelling characterization through the years, something that we owe, to a large degree, to Rickman putting on that black robe and essentially turning into Severus Snape, the unnerving Potions Master at Hogwarts.
Warner Bros. might currently be laboring under the delusion (as Dumbledore would say) that it can remake Harry Potter and imitate the success of the original series, but we all know that when it comes down to it, there’s simply no replacing Alan Rickman’s Snape.
