The Harry Potter books as well as the movie series are known to bring readers and viewers to unexpected surprises: both beautifully magical and confusingly odd. Maybe that’s why JK Rowling didn’t hesitate to let everyone know about Hogwarts’ Headmaster Professor Dumbledore’s sexuality of not being straight, but rather gay.
While fans didn’t see this unexpected revelation coming, the actor who played the character for six movies in the series from 2004 to 2011, Michael Gambon, had only one question to ask the author after he met her later on sets.
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Dumbledore’s Sexuality In JK Rowling’s Perspective And Michael Gambon’s Reaction To It
Although JK Rowling did a fantastic job with the Harry Potter books as well as the movie series, this one revelation from her about one of the most beloved characters from the series left most fans shocked: that she “always thought of Dumbledore as gay.”
As per Entertainment Weekly, the writer has talked about it several times ever since her first revelation at Carnegie Hall in 2007 while answering fans’ questions. Explaining how Dumbledore got close to Grindelwald as a teenager until the latter chose to pursue dark magic to one question from a fan who asked if the Headmaster ever found love, she said,
“Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. It was passionate, and it was a love relationship. But as happens in any relationship, gay or straight or whatever label we want to put on it, one never knows really what the other person is feeling. You can’t know, you can believe you know.”
But Michael Gambon, who played the character after Richard Harris, had a completely different reaction to it. When Rowling brought forth this unexpected revelation, Gambon only had one question for her:
“Is it because of the way I’m playing it?”
And while he did admit to ‘cutting around’ on the sets after finding out, he still stated clearly that “it doesn’t make any difference” to him.
Michael Gambon Finds Dumbledore’s Famosity To Be ‘Odd’
According to Today, Michael Gambon finds it ‘very odd’ how powerful characters like his in the Harry Potter saga are.
“It’s very odd,” Gambon said. “I hadn’t realized before just how powerful these things are. I just do the job and go home and you forget it” — adding a snap of his finger.
He further shared how, after Richard Harris passed away, he was called by his close company, which included the late Alan Rickman, Jim Broadbent, and Maggie Smith, to play the Headmaster.
“They rang me up and said, ‘Will you do it?’ Like any other job, I said, ‘Sure,’” recalled Gambon. “Then you find yourself in the middle of this thing.”
Source: Today | Entertainment Weekly
