Why Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint Hasn’t Been In A Movie In 6 Years, Per The Actor

Rupert Grint in Harry Potter still courtesy of Warner Bros.

Rupert Grint is not the flashiest of the Harry Potter stars. The actor keeps a low profile on social media -- though he does have an Instagram now and a record-breaking one to boot -- and unlike some of his co-stars he's kept a lower profile, having neither embodied a Disney Princess or played a farting corpse. Now, he’s touching on why he hasn’t been in a movie for six years.

While many of the Harry Potter kids have gone on to new and different projects, Rupert Grint is notable for quietly having crafted a TV career in the years since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 hit the big screen. While he seems happy with the trajectory his career has taken, he did reveal in an interview with Gold Derby that he knows “it’s been a long time” since he ventured onto the big screen, also touching on how his series Servant relates.

I know it’s been a long time. This show [Servant] really feels like an Apple product. It’s quite dark and shiny and innovative in a way. The fact that we’re doing half-hour episodes in this genre is quite a new thing, so it feels like a really fun place to be and what I love about TV — it feels quite familiar to me, even with Potter being this part of long-running thing and the opportunity to grow a character over a whole series is similar to Potter in a way, so I feel I’m quite comfortable in TV and yeah, I like it. I like the flexibility and the pace of it as well. The quality is really good.

In fact, it’s been six years since he last ventured to appear in a movie. He did a few flicks after his stint the Wizarding World, but the 2015 film Moonwalkers from Antoine Bardou-Jacquet and starring Ron Perlman was his last big jaunt on the big screen before he started making the switch to TV with a small part in Tracey Ullman's Show.

Speaking with the outlet, Rupert Grint also talked his current project, the Apple TV+ series Servant, and how he’s already filmed for Season 3 of the project. That upcoming season is expected to be the show’s second to last, but in general it sounds as if Grint has gotten pretty comfortable with longer-form storytelling. In fact, his comment that Harry Potter might have to do with that, since it was a project where Grint also got to inhabit a character for a lengthy period of time, makes total sense to me.

My first introduction to Rupert Grint: TV Star was via the miniseries The ABC Murders in which John Malkovich tries his hand at playing the famous detective Hercule Poirot. In that piece, Rupert Grint plays the new inspector. He’s a youngish chap and trying to figure out how to work with one Hercule Poirot is never an easy task. To me it was a nice transitional role from playing a young man on the big screen to playing an adult role, though still on the more youthful side. To note though, prior to my introduction to Grint as a TV star, he’d also appeared in notable roles in Snatch and Sick Note.

These days, Rupert Grint is actually in his thirties. He became a dad during the pandemic and he’s talked before about how his role as a dad has reflected how he feels about his Servant role. We’re a far cry off from the little tyke who helped Harry Potter through some daunting tasks despite being terrified, or even the young man just kicking off his TV career. Now that we have a gauge for when Servant is ending, I’m interested to see what the actor will do next.

Will Rupert Grint continue his streak of not appearing on the big screen? Only time will tell.

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Jessica Rawden
Managing Editor

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.