HBO Cast Arthur Weasley, and the Actor Has a Very Familiar Last Name

A week after locking in Ginny, Dobby and Tom Riddle, HBO’s Harry Potter has gone back to the Season 2 casting well, and this one came with a family connection fans clocked within minutes.

Rafe Spall has been cast as Arthur Weasley, joining Molly Hewitt-Richards as Moaning Myrtle and Jasper Ambrose as Colin Creevey for the Chamber of Secrets season. All three roles are new to Season 2, and the timing lines up with the rest of this autumn’s casting sprint as the show pushes through pre-production at Leavesden Studios ahead of filming.

Rafe Spall is Timothy Spall’s son

Spall is a recognisable name from Life of Pi and Black Mirror, but the detail that spread fastest is his father. Timothy Spall played Peter Pettigrew across the original film series. A Spall returning to the wizarding world, this time on the right side of it, was always going to become its own trending moment. It also fits a pattern: this production keeps casting actors with existing ties to the films’ cast and crew rather than treating the reboot as a clean break from that history.

Chamber of Secrets needs all three of these characters

Arthur Weasley, Moaning Myrtle and Colin Creevey are not headline roles in the way Ginny or Tom Riddle are, but the second book leans on each of them to do real work. Arthur anchors the Burrow, the flying-car chaos that opens the story and the Ministry politics that start creeping in here. Myrtle is the mechanical key to the entire back half of the plot: no Myrtle, no bathroom, no way into the Chamber. Colin is the first look at how the wizarding world reacts to Harry’s fame through an ordinary student’s eyes, a thread the films largely compressed away.

Casting all three in one announcement, on the heels of last week’s Ginny, Dobby and Riddle news, suggests the Chamber of Secrets ensemble is close to locked before filming begins.

Season 2’s cast is now genuinely large

Ginny, Dobby, Tom Riddle, and now Arthur, Myrtle and Colin, on top of the returning trio and staff from Season 1. Our living HBO series tracker keeps the full confirmed list for both seasons in one place.

If the Weasleys are on your mind now, the Burrow is worth a visit in the books again. It is the first house in the series Harry is genuinely happy in, and Arthur is the reason why: a man who runs a government office, keeps a shed full of illegal Muggle artefacts, and asks about the function of a rubber duck with total sincerity. Rafe Spall has the hardest job on this cast list, which is to be that warm without being a joke.