16 March 2024 , 18:48
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Miriam Margolyes has stunned fans by revealing she turned down half a million pounds to star in a Marvel TV show.
The 82-year-old actress - famous for playing Professor Pomona Sprout in the Harry Potter film series - was approached to play a witch in upcoming Marvel show Agatha. The show is a spin-off of hit series WandaVision which saw Elizabeth Olsen reprise her role as Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, in a psychological superhero drama where she processed her grief by entrapping an entire town of people and forcing them to play out her fantasy that her robotic husband Vision, played by Paul Bettany, was still alive and they had two children together.
Actress Kathryn Hahn co-starred in the show as villainous witch Agatha Harkens and leads the cast of the spin-off show. In her new autobiography, Oh Miriam!, Australian-British actress Margolyes reveals she named her own price to star in the Marvel show, but turned the project down when they refused to meet her demands.
She explained that she was reluctant to play another witch character after previously performing in the Harry Potter film franchise - and also, somewhat boldly, she declared she doesn’t like America and didn’t want to film the show there. She also explained that the breakdown in negotiations was more down to her own greed rather than a creative issue.
The actress played Professor Pomona Sprout in the Harry Potter film series (WARNER BROS)According to News Corp Australia, Miriam writes: “They contacted me and said, ‘we’re doing a story about witches’. I thought, ‘oh god, not witches again, because I’ve done that with Harry Potter’... I don’t like America and I didn’t want to be in Georgia for four months. So I just said, ‘well, I want a million pounds’ and they said, ‘you can have half a million’, and I said, ‘no, I don’t want to do it’, so it just stopped. Really it’s a story about my own greed rather than anything else."
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Fans were astonished by her honesty, with one written on X: “I'd like to be in a position where I have the sense of self-worth (& the bank account) where I can turn down half a million because I don't want to be somewhere.”
Miriam’s declaration that she doesn’t like America and refuses to work in Georgia comes after she lashed out at the multi-billion dollar making Harry Potter franchise which made her a household name to millions. Taking aim at the franchise in a recent interview, the star said: “I worry about Harry Potter fans because they should be over that by now.
"It was 25 years ago and it’s for children. I think it’s for children, but they get stuck in it. I do cameos and people say, ‘Oh, we’re having a Harry Potter-themed wedding’ and I think, ‘Gosh, what’s their first night of fun going to be?’ I can’t even think about it! Harry Potter is wonderful, I’m very grateful to it. It’s over – that’s what I think.”