Over two decades before Jason Isaacs had “The White Lotus” viewers meme-ing, debating, and dissecting his performance as Timothy Ratliff in season three, he played Lucius Malfoy — whom he called “an old-fashioned racist” — in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.”
Isaacs, 61, has famously played several villainous characters, and his latest turn in “The White Lotus” shares parallels with his celebrated performance in “Harry Potter.” Both Ratliff and Malfoy are deeply flawed patriarchal figures whose families are mired in wealth, power, and an overinflated sense of self-importance.
However, Isaacs said he wouldn’t characterize any of his characters as classic storybook “villains” because their motivations are realistic — and, in the case of Malfoy, rooted in historical precedent.
“I take parts when I go, ‘That’s a human being.’ Lucius is an old-fashioned racist and he’s trying to make Hogwarts great again,” Isaacs told Business Insider, alluding to President Donald Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
“He’s a guy that believes when old, white, rich people like him ruled the world — wizards with ‘pure’ wizarding blood — it was better,” Isaacs continued. “The great American industrialists at the turn of the 20th century were all eugenicists. They didn’t think they were villains.”
In the “Harry Potter” series, Malfoy is among the loyal followers of Lord Voldemort, a group known as Death Eaters. Over the years, many readers and book critics have noted the group’s parallels with the Nazi party, connecting Voldemort’s oppression of non-magical people (“muggles”) and wizards with mixed parentage (“half-bloods”) with Adolf Hitler’s antisemitic, white supremacist doctrine.
Warner Bros. Pictures
Alongside Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange, and Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort, Isaacs’ Malfoy is among the most memorably sinister presences in the “Harry Potter” series, which wrapped with “Deathly Hallows: Part 2” in 2011.
Isaacs, who was raised Jewish in Liverpool, England, said he nearly passed on the beloved franchise because he was already committed to playing Captain Hook in P.J. Hogan’s live-action “Peter Pan.”
Isaacs had originally auditioned for Gilderoy Lockhart, a handsome narcissist who only appears in the second “Harry Potter” film, but was offered Malfoy instead. Though Isaacs was hesitant to play two “children’s villains” in a row, his family members persuaded him to take the role — much to his relief, in retrospect.
“It was a joy because every couple of years, I’d go to ‘Harry Potter’ land for a month or two months. I wasn’t on it very much. I was doing many television series and films in between,” Isaacs said. “It was like going back to a holiday resort, seeing your old friends. It was a joy.”
Malfoy will soon be re-cast for HBO’s forthcoming “Harry Potter” reboot, which will reimagine the classic movie series as a TV show.
Though Isaacs admitted it’ll be “weird” for the original actors to see new versions of their characters onscreen, he said he’s made peace with Hollywood’s cyclical nature.
“My kids don’t know that Tobey Maguire was Spider-Man or even Andrew Garfield. For them, it’s Tom Holland,” he explained. “Roger Moore was my Bond.”
“Everyone’s got their own person. This new ‘Harry Potter’ will be for the new generation that will watch it,” he continued, adding: “Such is life. We’ve had a good run.”
Read BI’s full Role Play interview with Jason Isaacs here.
