Rupert Grint Is Returning as Ron Weasley for the First Time in 15 Years

Rupert Grint will reprise the role that made him famous when he joins Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at Broadway's Lyric Theatre in New York.

His limited engagement is scheduled to run for 17 weeks, from February 2 until May 30, 2027.

It's significant for one very simple reason.

Grint hasn't played Ron Weasley since 2011.

That was when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 brought the original eight-film Harry Potter series to an end after a decade on the big screen.

Now, more than 15 years later, Ron is coming back.

Only this time he's considerably older.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child takes place years after the original story.

Harry, Ron and Hermione aren't children wandering the corridors of Hogwarts anymore.

They're adults.

They're parents.

And they've got children of their own getting into trouble.

For Grint, that means returning to Ron at a completely different stage of the character's life.

There's also a lovely bit of real life mirroring the fiction.

Grint is now a father himself, making his return to an older, parental Ron particularly fitting.

After spending most of his childhood growing up alongside the character, he's now meeting him again from an entirely different perspective.

It's difficult to believe just how much time has passed.

Grint was only a child when he was cast alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

Released in 2001, the film introduced an entire generation to the cinematic versions of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley.

Grint subsequently appeared in every instalment of the original film series.

Chamber of Secrets.

Prisoner of Azkaban.

Goblet of Fire.

Order of the Phoenix.

Half-Blood Prince.

And both parts of Deathly Hallows.

For an entire generation, there simply isn't another Ron Weasley.

Which makes seeing Grint return to the character after all this time considerably more interesting than another piece of Harry Potter casting news.

Grint isn't the first member of the original Harry Potter movie generation to revisit his famous character through Cursed Child.

Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy throughout the film series, has also returned to the Wizarding World on stage as the adult Draco.

That makes Grint's casting feel like the beginning of something particularly interesting.

We aren't suggesting Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson are about to turn up on Broadway as Harry and Hermione.

Nothing like that has been announced.

But Cursed Child has shown that actors who grew up making those films can revisit their characters without simply making another Harry Potter movie.

And we'd be lying if we said that doesn't make us curious about who might eventually follow them.

The timing is particularly fascinating because another version of Ron Weasley now exists.

HBO's new Harry Potter television adaptation has cast Alastair Stout as the young Ron, alongside Dominic McLaughlin as Harry and Arabella Stanton as Hermione. The television series is being designed as a new adaptation of J.K. Rowling's seven novels rather than a continuation of the original films.

So we're entering the strange situation where the Wizarding World can have a new generation discovering Ron from the beginning while Grint returns to play the character as an adult.

For those of us who remember queuing for the original movies, that's enough to make you feel approximately 400 years old.

There are some characters that actors simply never escape.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Rupert Grint has done plenty since Harry Potter, but Ron Weasley will always be the character millions of people immediately associate with him.

And after 15 years away, he's apparently ready to embrace that again.

Not for another enormous Hollywood sequel.

Not for a reboot.

But to see what happened when that terrified little boy who once followed Harry Potter into Hogwarts grew up, became a husband and became a dad.

That's actually a rather lovely way to return.

Rupert Grint is Ron Weasley again.

And suddenly 2001 doesn't feel quite as long ago as it did yesterday.