Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | November 21, 2025
Tom Felton recently made his Broadway debut. He’s following in the footsteps of some of his old co-stars. But where Daniel Radcliffe reinvented himself as a daring stage performer and Alfred Enoch and Harry Melling were educated in the classics, Felton is returning to familiar territory. He’s playing Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the stage sequel-slash-official fanfiction of noted transphobe J.K. Rowling’s book series that sees Harry and his generation as adults with their kids now attending Hogwarts.
It’s a major boon for the show, which has seen increased ticket sales as a result. But I found myself feeling inexplicably sad watching footage of Felton on stage as the adult version of the character he played as a kid. Yeah, I had my usual emotions over the never-ending popularity of Potter and how people continue to line Rowling’s overladen pockets with cash that she is using to actively hurt trans people. I rolled my eyes at Felton’s refusal to confront the system he keeps engaging in, even as many of his former colleagues choose solidarity with queer people over an association with their former boss. I expected all of that. What I didn’t expect was a surprise strain of pathos for a rich actor who has eagerly swaddled himself in Slytherin robes to continue profiting from an increasingly toxic brand. But really, is this all Tom Felton has?
Felton was often considered one of the more talented kids among the HP cast. In the early films, he was appropriately snivelling and easy to root against, but he also got some fun one-liners and seemed at ease in front of the camera. It’s tough to convey natural charm and comfort when you’re so young. A lot of pre-adolescent child performances are pure vibes for a reason. Felton seemed to know what he was doing and had a good grasp on the character of Malfoy, a bully who enjoyed the privileges of his family name but slowly became burdened by its weight.
One could argue that, maybe, Felton was too good as Draco. At the very least, as he got older, grew taller, and rocked the bleached blonde hair, he made the character highly appealing for a lot of the girls his own age who grew up watching him and discovered the joys of a bad boy. By the time Draco is haunted by the expectations put upon him by the rise of Voldemort, he’s pure fanfic catnip. That, combined with a lot of adaptation cuts from the source material, made it easy for people to forget that Felton was playing a racist. Chicks dug Draco. I saw the fanfics, I was there.
As the series ended and the actors moved on, Felton worked pretty consistently. He wasn’t getting a ton of leading roles, but he was working on film and TV often enough to have a perfectly respectable career (especially when compared to some of his co-stars, who just disappeared from the face of the planet.) He had many opportunities to move on, not unlike Radcliffe or Rupert Griint, who have stretched their range beyond the stifling confines of a world where wizards didn’t bother to invent toilets. But Felton always came back to Malfoy.
He encouraged fans on social media with mini roleplay moments and nostalgia bait, particularly as TikTok took off. Since the Potter-verse continues to be a money-making machine for its rotten creator and the myriad corporate offshoots sprung from its roots, it will remain a solid career move for him. Many former Potter kids remain regulars on the convention circuit and sell Cameos to eager fans hoping for a birthday message or well done for their exam results. Even the established stars who came to the franchise as familiar faces are happy to sign autographs and make a quick buck from their appearance. This is a major part of being an actor now. Even A-Listers do the meet & greets now.
But one could do all of that without continuing to suck up to a vile bigot who has forever tainted her legacy with her own well-funded hate campaigns. Felton and company could do convention appearances and such without putting more money in Rowling’s pocket. There’s a stark difference between doing that and all but begging for work from her roster. As Rowling’s transphobia became more terrifying, Felton kept making his allegiance to her clear with mealy-mouthed statements of faux kindness. He was Team JKR, plain and simple. While Radcliffe voiced his support for the trans community, Felton seemed terrified of risking Rowling’s wrath. Understandable, perhaps, given how she’s wielded her cultish supporters for such cruelty. But getting the chance to play Malfoy once more reeked of him being rewarded for his snivelling loyalty to a bigot.
On a base level, I do feel some sympathy for Felton. Being a child star sucks, and having your life defined by something you did before you were even old enough to vote must be disheartening. History is littered with examples of former child actors and musicians who were casually discarded by the same industries that profited from them once a younger, cuter, and cheaper model came along. Even those who successfully make the jump into a stable adult career are forced to deal with the baggage of having been the world’s little sibling. With the Harry Potter kids, they’re weighed down further by the mammoth force of that cultural benchmark, that generational IP that is being milked for all its worth over a decade since the film franchise concluded. Imagine being a 35-year-old who was in one of those films for, like, seven minutes, and knowing that every achievement that follows will come second in your obituary to being Mumbles McSteretypeName when you were 14.
Tom Felton is in these eight films for a collective screentime of less than 40 minutes. I’ve taken longer to eat a moderately spicy curry than Tom Felton’s combined HP screentime. A full-time working, tax-paying adult in his late 30s will always be a bratty teenage Slytherin to millions of people. His face is on everything from Lego sets to fan art of graphic fanfiction featuring him and Emma Watson (several instances of which have been published as “original” romantasy in 2025.) That’s his legacy. That is what he will be known as until the day he dies, even if he wins an Oscar or joins the MCU or starts caring about trans people. He could run away from it, condemn Rowling, and go full “I am not Spock” if he so desired, and it wouldn’t change what will be the first line of his obituary. I understand the desire to lean in and milk it. If everyone else is making money, why not me?
That’s an easy call to make when you’re not the one being hurt, when your loved ones aren’t at risk from the obscene increase in bigoted attacks that have plagued the country. It’s simple enough to say, “I don’t really want to get involved in politics” when you’re all but immune to their damage. There’s no neutrality in continuing to make money for a woman who has repeatedly announced that she’ll use her riches to hurt trans people on a legislative and cultural level. We know where the cash from that terrible play goes. We know where the profits from that starry cast-laden audiobook go. We know what that new HBO Max TV series will do to her bottom line. Everyone involved is culpable. Felton is not alone on that front, but hoo boy, does his lack of backbone feel particularly sad.
So, when I see Felton in full Draco mode on Broadway, looking like a cosplay version of himself, I wonder if he feels the awkwardness of it all as potently as I do. Sure, plenty of people are cheering him on, and Rowling isn’t spending days of her precious life tweeting about how much she hates him. But is that all there is to it, aside from the money? This endless cycle of reliving your adolescent peak, the assembly line of nostalgia with blinkers on, is saccharine to the point of corrosiveness. Never complain, never question, and keep being the version of yourself that the world desires, even if it’s a teenage racist nepo baby created by a woman who keeps comparing trans people to predators. The thing about nostalgia is that, as BoJack Horseman famously noted, when you look at the world through rose-tinted glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.
