Ben Barnes is addressing fan demands that he play Sirius Black in the Harry Potter reboot.
Barnes, who’s no stranger to the fantasy genre, playing Prince Caspian in The Chronicles of Narnia films and The Darkling in Netflix’s Shadow and Bone.
“You wouldn’t believe the amount of Harry Potter books I’ve signed or Gryffindor scarves I’ve been given as gifts,” Barnes told Us Weekly.
“The amount of fan fiction that I’ve been drafted into very enthusiastically is incredible,” he noted.
Fans in online communities have long been asking for a spin-off about The Marauders, including Harry’s father James and his pals Sirius, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. Fans suggested Ben for the role of young Sirius, Andrew Garfield as Lupin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as James Potter.
Ben continued: “It’s been going on for 20 years that people have been very kindly saying that they would’ve liked me to have played a young version of the Sirius Black character in Harry Potter, but now it’s been going on so long that I’m now the age of the actual character in the books.”
He also shared that when fans ask him to sign Harry Potter paraphernalia, he used to think they were confusing the Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia franchises.
“Now I understand that it was this group of Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Andrew Garfield and myself that they were just very keen to be these characters when they kind of came out,”
Ben Barnes is currently promoting his debut album Where the Light Gets In.
