In an interview, the actor of Vecna and Eins from “Stranger Things” told how he almost played the role of the Hogwarts student – and why that didn’t happen in the end: The producers of the films “came to us at the school, to look for potential Potters and potential cast members, and chose me from a group of people.”
So it came about that the then-teenager had a meeting with Chris Columbus, the director of the first two “Harry Potter” films. The contestants were required to tell a joke. “I had just heard a joke about why a fairy sits at the top of the Christmas tree. It was a really dirty joke,” recalls the actor. He did, however, tell the joke during the audition. When the room went silent, he was sure: “Ok, you screwed that up. You better look for something else now.”
In fact, he didn’t get the lead role. But a few years later he played the young Grindelwald in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1” and in “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of GrindelwaldFun Fact: The Crimes of Grindelwald marked the second time Campbell Bower starred opposite Johnny Depp: His first film role was in Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, which starred Depp.