Harry Melling surprises family with bold new role

Harry Melling, the former Harry Potter actor who played Dudley Dursley, admits his family was “quite shocked” by his latest career move.

The 36-year-old stars opposite Alexander Skarsgard in Pillion, which explores a dominant/submissive relationship between biker gang leader Ray and the younger Colin (Melling). 

The film features explicit adult content, including intimate scenes set in forests and alleyways.

Reflecting on his choice, Melling told WWD, “A lot of them were quite shocked when I mentioned the scenes of orgies in the woods and alleyway blowjobs. But once you read the whole thing, all that stuff makes sense in the context of what the movie’s doing. I just knew immediately that I was game.”

He described a pivotal scene down an alleyway as particularly jarring for audiences. “Up to that point, it’s kind of quite warm and fuzzy. It’s a sort of Christmas family movie, and then Colin goes down the alleyway following Ray and the audience goes, ‘oh wow, no, OK, here we go. We’re into something else now,’” Melling said.

Since his Harry Potter days, Melling has pursued a diverse range of roles, including a tragic artist in the Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), aiming to challenge himself as an actor.

“All that happened when I was so young, and I always knew I wanted so much from this career. I always wanted to act, and I wanted to have as rich and as varied a career as possible,” he explained.

Melling emphasized that his early fame never limited him. “I don’t really feel that it kind of pigeonholed me at all because it was so young when I did it. But the thing that I was always chasing was, ‘How do I try and have the most interesting career that I’ve always dreamed of doing?’”