David Threlfall Is the New Voice of HBO’s Sorting Hat. He’s Taken Over a Famous Voice Before
HBO has found the voice that will put every first year at Hogwarts in a house. David Threlfall, best known as Frank Gallagher in the British Shameless, will voice the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter series that starts on Christmas Day. He follows Leslie Phillips, the Hat in the films, and it isn’t the first time he’s stepped into a part another actor’s voice made famous.
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The Hat has one of the best known voice parts in the story. It sits on each new student’s head in the Great Hall and calls out a house: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw or Slytherin. In the films that voice belonged to Phillips, the Carry On star whose “Ding dong” became a British catchphrase. He voiced the Hat in three of the eight films and was its English voice on the Forbidden Journey theme park ride. He died on 7 November 2022, at 98.
The scene readers will be measuring Threlfall against is the one below, from the first film. The Hat murmurs, considers and shouts, and when it reaches Harry it argues with him.
Hear the voice: Leslie Phillips as the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Video: Harry Potter, on YouTube
He has taken over a famous voice before
Threlfall is 73, and most viewers know him as a face rather than a voice. He played Frank, the drunk and scheming father of six, in all 11 seasons of Shameless on Channel 4. But his credits show a long second career at the microphone, and one job that looks a lot like this one.
In Bing, the CBeebies cartoon about a young rabbit, his small carer Flop also narrates. Each episode opens with Flop saying “Round the corner not far away.” Mark Rylance voiced Flop in the first series. When the second series arrived in 2019, the voice was Threlfall’s. Parents who had heard Rylance’s Flop hundreds of times got a new one, much as Harry Potter fans now will.
Radio is where he has done most of his voice work. He played the Italian detective Paolo Baldi in BBC Radio 4’s Baldi, read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for a radio adaptation and voiced Iago in an audio Othello for Arcangel. He has won two Sony Radio Awards, for playing Spike Milligan and Ken Dodd. For one football season, 2017 to 2018, he was also the voice over on the film Manchester City played before every home game.
He has talked about the radio work with obvious pleasure. “Another thing I’ve enjoyed doing is Baldi on Radio 4, that’s enormously enjoyable,” he told WhatsOnStage in 2003. “We recorded it in Northern Ireland and its top drawer, great fun.”
In the same interview he explained how the size of a voice changes with the room. “You’ve got to be heard in the theatre, you get a sense of what feels right and if it’s in the theatre you have to make that carry in a way you don’t in the other two,” he said, meaning film and television. A Hat that speaks inside a boy’s head and then shouts a house name across the Great Hall needs both sizes in one scene.
Following Leslie Phillips
Phillips’ Hat was dry, unhurried and faintly amused, an old man’s voice that sounded like it had seen a thousand children and could tell them apart in a second. The obvious question for HBO’s version is whether Threlfall plays it close to that or goes somewhere new.
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures, via the official Harry Potter channel on YouTube
HBO hasn’t said how the Hat will be made on screen, whether it’s a puppet, a computer generated hat or a physical prop with the voice added later. None of the outlets that reported the casting carried a statement from HBO, the show’s writer Francesca Gardiner or Threlfall himself. TheWrap, Variety and ScreenRant all reported the names without comment from anyone involved.
Leslie Phillips
Born in 1924, so 77 when the first film came out. A comic actor known for a two word catchphrase.
David Threlfall
Born in 1953, so 73 when the series starts. A dramatic actor with a second life on radio.
What fans have had is a tease. On 31 August, the official Harry Potter Instagram account posted a shadowy Sorting Hat with the words “Something new is coming from the Sorting Hat.” MuggleNet reported at the time that the Hat’s voice hadn’t been heard yet, and that fans were guessing at a voice actor or a singing Hat. In the books the Hat sings a song at the start of the sorting; the films left it out.
The September teaser trailer shows Harry, played by Dominic McLaughlin, sitting under the Hat in the Great Hall and being placed in Gryffindor. HBO hasn’t said whose voice, if any, that trailer used.
The rest of the Hogwarts newcomers
The other four castings fill out the castle. Leo Bill plays Nearly Headless Nick, the Gryffindor ghost John Cleese played in the films. Andrew Brooke is the Bloody Baron, Slytherin’s ghost. Daniel Fearn plays the Fat Friar, the Hufflepuff ghost; ScreenRant notes he also appeared briefly in the first film. Laura Smyth is the Fat Lady, the portrait at the Gryffindor entrance.
Collider’s post on X summed up the mood: “Hogwarts is getting even more magical! HBO’s Harry Potter series has officially revealed FIVE more cast members.”
They join a cast led by McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger and Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley, with John Lithgow as Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Snape and Nick Frost as Hagrid. Gardiner writes and executive produces, and Mark Mylod directs several episodes. A second season, based on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, is already in production.
Kit Harington, who plays Gilderoy Lockhart in that second season, has been on the sets. “It is extraordinary the kind of craftsmanship that’s on work in that show,” he told The Independent, adding that in an age of AI “they’re making everything.” For a voice role like the Hat, that will be the test on 25 December: whether a voice that has to carry a whole magical object sounds like it belongs in the room.
Image: HBO Max, official teaser trailer
When viewers hear him
The first season premieres on HBO and HBO Max on 25 December. The Sorting comes early in the first book, so Threlfall’s Hat should be one of the first big voice moments of the series. Before that, this Saturday, 7 November, marks four years since Phillips died. For a lot of fans his is still the voice in their heads when they read the books.
Sources: HBO casting announcement as reported by TheWrap, Variety and ScreenRant, 30 October 2026; The Independent via Yahoo News, 31 October 2026; Kotaku en Español (Collider’s post on X), 31 October 2026; MuggleNet, 31 August 2026; WhatsOnStage, 1 December 2003; Wikipedia entries for David Threlfall, Leslie Phillips and Bing. Hero image: Harry Potter, Back to Hogwarts. Video: Harry Potter on YouTube.
Lee este artículo en español: David Threlfall será la nueva voz del Sombrero Seleccionador de HBO. Ya heredó una voz famosa antes
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