Tom Felton, the 38-year-old actor who played Draco Malfoy across all eight Harry Potter films from 2001 to 2011, confirmed this week that he has reached out to Lox Pratt, the 14-year-old actor taking on the role in HBO’s upcoming reboot series.
The contact came in the form of a note, a phone number, a home address, and a piece of advice so deliberately non-prescriptive that it has become the most talked-about quote to come out of the entire pre-launch press cycle for the show.
Felton was a guest on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast when Horowitz asked if he had been in touch with Pratt. He had.
“I’ve sent word, yes,” Felton said. “I think it’s really important. It’s very different, we were entering things that don’t exist; there’s quite a lot of weight now. So the last thing I’m gonna do is offer anything other than say, ‘Here’s my phone number. Here’s my address.’ To his parents as well as him, and to anyone else there.”
Then came the part that everyone quoted. “I can’t offer you advice. This is your journey. Have as much fun as possible. Take as many pictures as you can. Steal as many props as you can, they’ll be worth a fortune. But also, if you do need a word of encouragement or questions to ask, I’m there.”
It is a near-perfect piece of mentorship delivery: warm, self-aware, funny, practical, and principled enough to refuse the thing that would have made it less useful.
Felton understood, from personal experience, that advice about how to play Draco Malfoy is exactly what the kid does not need. What he needs is a number he can call.
Who Is Lox Pratt?
Lox Pratt is 14 years old and was cast as Draco Malfoy for HBO’s Harry Potter series after previously appearing in the Lord of the Flies stage production.
His first public appearance as Draco came in the show’s first trailer, released March 25, 2026, in which he is seen in full Slytherin robes at Hogwarts.
The trailer gathered significant attention within 48 hours of release and confirmed the show’s premiere date: Christmas Day 2026, sooner than many had anticipated.
Pratt’s Draco will be, by the promises of the production, a more fully realized version of the character than the films allowed.
The HBO series commits one full season to each of J.K. Rowling’s seven books, meaning this cast is signing on for what could be a decade-long commitment to their roles.
In Pratt’s specific case that means following Draco from his initial sneer at Harry Potter on the Hogwarts Express through his eventual complicated moral reckoning in the final books, a complete arc across seven years of television.
The production has also promised to restore scenes from the books that the films couldn’t accommodate, including a deeper look at Draco’s home life and the Malfoy family dynamic, which gives Pratt more to work with than Felton had when the films kept Draco primarily at the periphery.
Why Felton Understood The Weight
Felton was 13 years old when he appeared in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2001, almost exactly Pratt’s age now.
He spent the next decade of his life playing one of fiction’s most recognizable villains, growing up on camera in ways that are impossible to fully prepare for, in an era that was already producing significant tabloid and press scrutiny of the young cast.
He has spoken openly over the years about the psychological pressures of that experience.
What strikes him most about the difference between his situation and Pratt’s is the landscape.
When Felton was filming at Leavesden Studios in the early 2000s, social media did not exist. There were no fan accounts, no comment sections, no immediate viral reactions to every casting choice.
The production itself was shot on physical film, a detail Felton said he had to stop and consciously remember when recently asked. “It took me a while the other day, someone said, ‘How were the films shot?’ And I was like, ‘Was it film?’ It’s like, ‘Of course it was film.'”
Lox Pratt is entering a completely different environment. The casting of the HBO series has already attracted intense public scrutiny, including significant online commentary about the diversity of the new cast.
When Horowitz pointed out that the new young actors are navigating the toxicity of social media that Felton never had to contend with as a child actor, Felton called it “inconceivable.”
“It didn’t exist, did it?” he said.
What Did The Rest Of The Original Cast Say?
Felton is not the only original cast member to reach out to his successor. Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter across all eight films and is currently performing his critically praised one-man show Every Brilliant Thing on Broadway, approximately 400 meters from the theatre where Felton is performing in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a fact Felton noted with characteristic good humor, wrote a letter to Dominic McLaughlin, the 11-year-old cast as the new Harry.
McLaughlin sent a letter back. Radcliffe told Good Morning America in November that he got a “very sweet note” in return.
Radcliffe has also been careful about the nature of his involvement. He has spoken publicly about not wanting to be a “spectral phantom” in the new cast’s lives, and made a pointed observation about what genuine support for the new young actors actually looks like.
“If people really want to look after these kids, one of the main things is to not ask about us, me, Emma, Rupert, all the time,” he said. The constant comparison between generations is, in his view, its own form of pressure on children who deserve to build their own relationship with the roles.
Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley, wrote a letter to Alastair Stout, the new Ron, that he described as “passing the baton.” “I had so much fun stepping into this world, and I hope he has the same experience,” Grint said.
Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger, has also been in contact with Arabella Stanton, who takes on the role in the series.
Where Is Felton Now?
Tom Felton is currently on Broadway in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, playing an adult Draco Malfoy in the play that serves as a sequel to the original series, set nineteen years after the events of Deathly Hallows.
He is scheduled to perform through May 10. The coincidence of Felton playing adult Draco on Broadway while a 14-year-old begins filming young Draco for HBO gives the entire mentorship moment a particularly neat dramatic shape.
The HBO series stars Dominic McLaughlin as Harry, Arabella Stanton as Hermione, Alastair Stout as Ron, and Lox Pratt as Draco. The adult cast includes John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid, and Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape.
The show was created by Francesca Gardiner and directed by Mark Mylod, with J.K. Rowling, David Heyman, and Neil Blair among the producers. It premieres Christmas Day 2026 on HBO and Max.
The first trailer, released March 25, showed the Dursleys as more overtly cruel than their film counterparts, a glimpse of Hogwarts rendered with what reviewers described as greater fidelity to the books, and Lox Pratt’s Draco in a single brief shot that was enough to send the internet into the kind of sustained reaction that the original films, shot before Twitter existed, never had to navigate in real time.
Tom Felton’s phone number sits in Pratt’s contacts. The advice, as promised, was minimal. The door is open.
