Nicholas Hoult is playing Gilderoy Lockhart in HBO’s Harry Potter Season 2
Superman star Nicholas Hoult has been cast as Gilderoy Lockhart, the vain fraud of a professor from Chamber of Secrets, in HBO’s Harry Potter series. He joins in Season 2, which films this fall, taking over a role Kenneth Branagh made famous in 2002.
HBO’s Harry Potter series just cast one of its most fun roles, and it went to a very busy man.
Nicholas Hoult will play Gilderoy Lockhart, the preening celebrity wizard who becomes Hogwarts’ Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, in the show’s second season. Deadline broke the news, with Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and others confirming it.
Lockhart is a Season 2 character, since each season of the series adapts one book, and Season 2 covers Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. That season begins filming this fall.
Who Gilderoy Lockhart is, for the non-readers
If you only know the movies, or need a refresher, Lockhart is one of the series’ best comic villains.
He’s a famous, impossibly vain wizard, a five-time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award, who’s written a shelf of best-selling books about his heroic adventures fighting dark creatures. Hogwarts hires him to teach, and most of the adults and students swoon over him.
The twist is that he’s a total fraud. Lockhart never did any of the things in his books. He found the wizards who actually did them and wiped their memories, then took the credit. He’s a coward and a liar hiding behind a dazzling smile, which is exactly what makes him fun to watch.
Kenneth Branagh played him in the 2002 film Chamber of Secrets, in a performance fans still quote. Hoult is stepping into big, blindingly white-toothed shoes.
Nicholas Hoult is already a Warner Bros. villain
Here’s the detail that makes this casting more interesting than a straight name-swap.
Hoult is currently Lex Luthor in the DC Universe, having played the Superman villain in James Gunn’s 2025 film, with a return coming in next summer’s Man of Tomorrow. Both HBO and DC sit under Warner Bros., so Hoult isn’t leaving the family to do this. He’s playing two of the studio’s marquee villains at the same time.
And they rhyme. Luthor and Lockhart are both fame-obsessed narcissists convinced of their own greatness, one a genius who thinks he’s a hero, the other a fraud who’s convinced everyone he is one. Hoult clearly has a lane playing vain, dangerous men who love a mirror, and Warner Bros. is happy to keep casting him in it.
He’s got range beyond that, too. He earned an Emmy nomination playing the ridiculous Emperor Peter in Hulu’s The Great, which is genuinely good practice for a character like Lockhart, plus roles in Nosferatu, Mad Max: Fury Road, and the X-Men films.
The rest of HBO’s Harry Potter cast
Hoult joins a cast that’s been filling out for a while, headlined by newcomers as the trio.
Dominic McLaughlin plays Harry, with Arabella Stanton as Hermione and Alastair Stout as Ron. The adult roster is stacked: John Lithgow as Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Snape, and Nick Frost as Hagrid.
Season 1, titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, premieres this Christmas, December 25, on HBO and HBO Max. The plan is to adapt all seven books across multiple seasons, which means this cast is signing on for a long haul.
The show still carries the J.K. Rowling question
Worth noting, because it’s part of the conversation around every casting: the series comes with baggage some fans and actors are still wrestling with.
Author J.K. Rowling is an executive producer on the show, and her public comments on transgender issues have made the project a lightning rod. Some fans have said they won’t watch, and some observers have questioned actors signing on. Others separate the work from the author entirely, and plenty of fans are simply excited for a faithful, book-length adaptation.
Where any individual lands on that is their own call, and the show is moving forward regardless, with a marquee cast and a Christmas launch. The reaction to Hoult’s casting split about the way everything Potter-related does now: praise for the fit, some fatigue with the whole enterprise, and the same argument that follows the franchise everywhere.
Fraud or not, Lockhart’s about to have the most famous smile at Hogwarts again. Hoult just has to decide how white to make the teeth.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Deadline (August 11, 2026), the exclusive breaking Hoult’s casting, the character description, and the fall filming start
Variety (August 11, 2026), the Season 2 confirmation, the December 25 premiere date, and the full principal cast
The Hollywood Reporter (August 11, 2026), the showrunner and producer details and Hoult’s upcoming projects
TVLine and SlashFilm (August 11, 2026), the casting confirmation and the fan-reaction and Rowling context