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In the “Harry Potter” movies, the binary of “good” and “evil” is illustrated pretty well by Harry himself — played by Daniel Radcliffe — and his lifelong enemy Lord Voldemort (played by Ralph Fiennes after he regains his corporeal form in the fourth installment, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”). Still, Harry has plenty of minor villains to deal with along the way, and one is his schoolboy nemesis Draco Malfoy, portrayed throughout the franchise’s eight movies by Tom Felton. So would Felton and Radcliffe work together again? According to Felton, they’ve chatted about it a bit, but there would be a bit of a twist if the two ever teamed up for a different project.
In an interview with Digital Spy in May of 2022, Felton was asked about any possible reunions with any of his “Harry Potter” co-stars, and he said he’d leap at the chance to work alongside Radcliffe in particular. “We all talk about doing something again in all different ways,” Felton told the outlet. “Daniel and I have often joked about the idea of when we do work together again, he’ll be the villain and I’ll be the hero.”
That would definitely be a fun role reversal, but whether or not the two will work together again remains to be seen. So what do you need to remember about Draco — and his dynamic with Harry — and what have these two former child actors been up to since the original “Harry Potter” movies ended in 2011?
Who did Tom Felton play in the Harry Potter movies?
In case you forgot what a weasel Tom Felton had to play in the “Harry Potter” movies, here’s a refresher. Harry Potter first meets the wealthy, spoiled, pureblood wizard Draco Malfoy while the two get fitted for their school robes in Diagon Alley; later, on the train heading to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Draco sucks up to Harry, realizing the kid he met at the tailoring shop is the famous “Boy Who Lived” (Harry is extremely famous in the wizarding world for destroying Voldemort when Harry was just a tiny baby). Harry rejects Draco’s brown-nosing and sticks with his new friend Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), whom Draco denigrates for coming from a poorer pureblood family, and an enemy is born.
Draco — usually just referred to as “Malfoy” by Harry, Ron, and their brilliant Muggleborn best friend Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) — absolutely sucks, relying on his wealthy dad Lucius (Jason Isaacs) to get him out of any given scrape and constantly insulting Ron for being impoverished and Hermione for not being pureblooded (in fact, he usually refers to by the wizarding slur “Mudblood”). By the time the sixth movie, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” rolls around, Draco is in pretty dire straits, and his dad can’t help him; now that Voldemort has fully returned to power, Lucius is on the outs with the Dark Lord (largely because he gets sent to the wizarding prison Azkaban after the fifth film, “Order of the Phoenix”), so Voldemort decides that Draco must be the one to murder Albus Dumbledore, the kindly yet powerful Hogwarts headmaster, which may well kill Draco in the process.
Draco doesn’t have to kill Dumbledore himself — his “fellow” Death Eater and actual double agent Severus Snape, played by the late Alan Rickman, does the deed instead — but it becomes extremely clear that Draco might be a twerp, but he’s not itching to become a murderer. After Voldemort’s defeat at the Battle of Hogwarts, the Malfoy family slinks into the background, choosing neither side as they stick together and escape the fray.
What have Tom Felton and Daniel Radcliffe been doing since Harry Potter ended?
It would be really great to see Daniel Radcliffe and Tom Felton turn their “Harry Potter” dynamic completely on its head, but the larger issue at play seems to be whether or not these two busy performers would be able to find the time. The same year that “Harry Potter” ended, Felton appeared in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” as Dodge Landon, and then moved into smaller projects like 2012’s “The Apparition” and the 2013 historical drama “Belle.” Felton continued working steadily in film until booking a pretty major role alongside Daisy Ridley in the 2018 Shakespeare adaptation “Ophelia” — he played Laertes — and his television roles include Julian Albert, or “Alchemy,” on “The Flash” and Logan Maine on “Origin.”
Felton is fairly busy, but Radcliffe is even busier. The actor behind the “Boy Who Lived” worked hard to break away from his image as Harry Potter — he performed a daring and difficult role requiring full-frontal nudity in the stage play “Equus” in both London and New York during the film franchise — and after it ended, he kept taking challenging and audacious projects. From the action comedy “The Lost City” to the television anthology series “Miracle Workers” to the “biopic” of Weird Al Yankovic simply titled “Weird,” Radcliffe has proven himself to be a wildly versatile actor — and in 2024, he won a Tony Award for his supporting role in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s multigenerational masterpiece “Merrily We Roll Along.” Hopefully, the two can find a minute and let Felton play the good guy and Radcliffe plays the bad guy for once.
The “Harry Potter” movies are streaming on Peacock.
