Gary Oldman Says Sirius Black Was Not in the ‘Harry Potter’ Movies Enough: ‘He Turned Up and Then He Went Through the Veil’

Gary Oldman recently told IndieWire that he believes Sirius Black wasn’t in the “Harry Potter” film franchise enough. The actor debuted as the fan-favorite character in 2004’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” but that movie marked the rare “Potter” film to give Sirius significant screen time. He was just a cameo in “Goblet of Fire” and “Deathly Hallows Part 2,” while his role in “Order of the Phoenix” was mainly just to show up and die.

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“I love, Sirius,” Oldman said. “He wasn’t in it enough. He turned up and then he went through the veil.”

The upcoming “Harry Potter” television series on Max will surely have more room to give Black screen time, not that Oldman thinks he’ll be back in the role.

“I would bet my money that they will get a whole new cast of people,” Oldman said. “Maybe in a few years, I could do Dumbledore.”

During an interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast last December, Oldman called his acting in the “Harry Potter” movies “mediocre” and added: “Maybe if I had read the books like Alan [Rickman], if I had got ahead of the curve, if I had known what’s coming, I honestly think I would have played it differently.”

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While Sirius Black may not have had enough screen time in the “Harry Potter” franchise, Oldman still has long credited the movies for saving his career along with his role in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” trilogy. He once said that acting jobs were drying up before he got cast as Sirius and James “Jim” Gordon — two roles that made him a fan favorite among genre fans and gave his career the star power it never had before.

“At 42 years old, I woke up divorced and I had custody of [my] boys,” Oldman said. “That, in itself, was… that was hard because there was a shift in the industry where a lot of productions were being [filmed in] Hungary, Budapest, Prague, Australia, you know, all of these places. So, I turned down a lot of work.”

“Thank God for ‘Harry Potter,’” he continued. “Thank God for ‘Harry Potter.’ I tell you, the two — ‘Batman’ and ‘Harry Potter’ — really, they saved me, because it meant that I could do the least amount of work for the most amount of money and then be home with the kids.”

Oldman currently stars in Apple TV+’s Emmy-nominated series “Slow Horses,” which is currently in its fourth season.

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