The Story Behind Francesca Gardiner’s HBO Hire: Meet The Showrunner Tasked With Casting Another Spell On ‘Harry Potter’ Fans
EXCLUSIVE: There is a sense of destiny in Francesca Gardiner being handed the keys to Hogwarts. The showrunner on HBO’s television adaptation of Harry Potter identifies with Hermione Granger and says she has always had an “unappealing desire to be top of the class.” Her rise to Harry Potter impresario, then, is her manifesting success on a grand scale.
Gardiner was picked for the job in June after a grueling four-month selection process involving J.K. Rowling’s input. The wheels of the Hogwarts Express are now turning, with casting underway and the writers room expanding to include Killing Eve scribe Laura Neal. As the locomotive speeds towards a 2027 premiere, Gardiner can comfortably claim to be one of the most influential showrunners in the business. The decisions she makes now could shape the careers of thousands of people for a decade, as well as catapult young actors to global stardom.
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Despite this, Potterheads have taken to forums to lament how little is known about the British writer. Gardiner declined to be interviewed for this profile, but for the first time, Deadline has jigsawed together her story by speaking to some of her closest collaborators, including The X-Files writer Frank Spotnitz and Jack Thorne, writer of stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. We have also mined the handful of public appearances she made pre-Potter.
What emerges is the portrait of a woman with storytelling in her blood, a zeal for childhood literature, and the skill to take on a daunting task like Potter with tenacity and grace. She is expected to be faithful to Rowling’s work and there is hope she can create a seminal TV experience for a whole new generation of fans. “Harry Potter is in safe hands,” says someone who knows Gardiner well.
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Born in November 1983 (she turned 41 last month), she belongs to a family of creatives. Her parents are classical violinist Elizabeth Wilcock and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, a once-celebrated English conductor who had a dramatic fall from grace last year after he admitted assaulting a male vocal soloist in his ensemble. She has two younger sisters: Josephine, a fellow writer, and Bryony, who works as a teacher.
Gardiner grew up on the 650-acre Gore Farm in rural Dorset, a space that was both a place where cattle were reared to be gifted to King Charles III (Sir John is a friend of His Majesty and conducted music at his Coronation) and a fertile ground for storytelling. Gardiner and her sisters collected stuffed rabbits and created an imaginary town for the toys. She was taken out of school to sing in her father’s operas. Over lingering summer holidays, the sisters turned curtains into costumes for musical plays penned by Gardiner.
Books were a safe space. Lost in the imagination of great authors, she found her social footing. In the 19th century halls of Bryanston boarding school, friendships took root around fantasy and magic. She recalls weeping her way through The Amber Spyglass, the finale of Philip Pullman’s sweeping trilogy of novels. Exploring darkness in childhood stories would later become a thread in her work, serving as the subject of her film school thesis and propelling her back into Pullman’s world as a writer on BBC and HBO’s His Dark Materials.
She got a taste for TV as a runner at Spooks producer Kudos, where she longed to be one of the writers striding into the office with an iPad under arm. But it wasn’t until she followed a boy to Argentina that she took her first steps towards writing professionally. Idle and isolated in a Spanish-speaking world, Gardiner attended screenwriting lessons and penned a story about the mothers of Buenos Aires who lost children during a military junta. The script was her ticket into London’s National Film and TV School and inspired the animated short Abuelas, which would later garner her and classmates a BAFTA nomination.
After she graduated film school, The Night Manager executive producer Stephen Garrett, the man running Kudos when Gardiner was delivering post and answering phones, introduced her to Spotnitz, who needed help moving to London. Gardiner almost literally jammed her foot in the door of The X-Files writer’s new home.
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Known as “Checky” to friends and colleagues, Gardiner speaks with the cut-glass English accent of a character in The Crown. One friend calls Gardiner “polite and well-raised,” which could be interpreted as a euphemism for posh, but this belies the “real twinkle and sense of mischief” in her character. Asked on a podcast what animal would be the physical manifestation of her soul (a d?mon in Pullman’s Dark Materials universe), Gardiner replied without hesitation: “A truffle pig. Curious, greedy.” Her hosts tittered with laughter.
Gardiner describes herself as equal parts introvert and extrovert, meaning she is just as happy posing elegantly for cameras on a red carpet, as she is locking herself away with the characters in her mind. She dislikes feeling trapped in either zone and confessed to having “never liked being part of an institution.” It’s the kind of characteristic that could be tested in a place like Warner Bros Discovery.
“She has a beguiling, charming exterior, but I think she’s that classic iron fist hidden in a velvet glove,” Garrett smiles. She puts it like this: “I don’t like the word bossy, but I am forthright in my opinion, I am assertive. I have a strong sense of my own taste.”
She does not consider herself to be a fast writer, nor is she wielding her pen in pursuit of profound answers. Instead, Gardiner wants stories to ask questions. Some allies do eulogize about her gift for prose, but they are universally in awe of her “story brain.” Gardiner says she sees scripts like Japanese rock gardens, where words are carefully composed and meticulously placed. Killing Eve executive producer Sally Woodward Gentle puts it like this: she has the mind like a Dorling Kindersley illustration, allowing her to see a story’s many layers all at once.
Like many writers, she admits to being consumed by her work, but keeps a balance through meditation retreats and spending time with her family. Her partner is a professional poker player, who brings home prize pots worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Together, they have a young daughter and a Cavapoo.
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Spotnitz introduced Gardiner to the world of writers rooms, which would put her on the path to Potter. He pioneered the system on European shows and Gardiner demonstrated a capability for deftly navigating the emotional nuances and politics of the rooms. Her introduction to the model came on Hunted, the 2012 spy series co-produced by the BBC and Cinemax, while her first paid script for Spotnitz was on The Transporter series in 2014.
“I just saw the way she carried herself, spoke to other people and navigated conflicts,” Spotnitz remembers. “When we would have disagreements in the writers room she was good at not jumping in until she had something constructive to say, and then coming up with an answer that was usually better than anybody else’s.”
Garrett says this was particularly notable given that women were usually outnumbered by men in writers rooms. The disparity stuck with Gardiner, who told female empowerment podcast Elevate that the industry transformed her into a “rabid feminist” because of “very infuriating experiences where I have felt treated differently.” Gender inequality aside, she adored writers rooms, saying the group dynamic is the “best possible experience you can have as a creative person.”
By 2019, Gardiner was playing an unusual role on Season 2 of Killing Eve, the Emmy-conquering BBC America series. She was hired as a “writer’s friend” to her real-life friend Emerald Fennell, acting as a bridge between the scripting process and the actors. “She’s an amazing communicator of tone and vision,” recalls Woodward Gentle, founder of Sid Gentle Films. “She is a strong advocate for people around her and for fairness. She’s aware of the human side of everything.”
This sense of emotional intelligence and collaborative spirit is a consistent observation among those who have worked with her. It will have served her well in the Succession writers room (a show she fangirled over before joining in 2021) and was an important hallmark of her time on the HBO and BBC series His Dark Materials, according to lead writer Thorne. He tells Deadline that Gardiner was “consistently fearless” about adapting the books and is a “brilliant writer.” She was ultimately trusted with penning the final two episodes. “I am the one to do this,” she told herself, no doubt thumbing her tear-stained copy of The Amber Spyglass.
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The blend of her writers room experience, devotion to fantasy literature, and her close proximity to HBO proved irresistible for Warner Bros Discovery. “Having had the good fortune of working with Francesca over the years … it is clear she is a brilliantly creative, thoughtful, and well-respected leader,” an HBO spokesperson says.
During a marathon of Harry Potter pitches in the first half of 2024, Gardiner eclipsed competition including The Devil’s Hour writer Tom Moran and Kathleen Jordan, creator of Netflix series Teenage Bounty Hunters. Little is known about the specifics of Gardiner’s vision, but there are clues. She has spoken in the past about her dislike of patronizing children and sanitizing horror, suggesting that darker themes in Potter could be embraced. Woodward Gentle — who has spoken with the writer in recent months — expects her adaptation to be unflinchingly faithful to the novels: “She feels very strongly that she needs to honor the books. I don’t think she’s going to be a shaker-upper, a provocateur.”
Gardiner is building her writers room, which Deadline understands includes Laura Neal, who worked on Season 3 of Killing Eve. Andy Greenwald, the creator of USA Network series Briarpatch, and Josephine Gardiner, Francesca’s sister, are also on the team. Josephine has no credit on a major screen project, but has previously collaborated with Francesca on an original feature film development.
Gardiner has also been teamed with Mark Mylod, the Succession director who is on on board to helm multiple episodes and executive produce. An eye is already being turned to casting, with Gardiner and colleagues said to be pursuing Mark Rylance as their pick for Albus Dumbledore. No deal is done, but a well-connected industry source says the Oscar winner is “odds-on” for the role.
Rowling has said she is “very involved” in the series — a sentiment echoed by HBO chief Casey Bloys. Thorne, who worked with Rowling to create the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage show, says the author was an “incredibly generous” collaborator.
Her presence has been painful for some Potter super fans who consider her Twitter posts on transgender rights to be toxic. Rowling’s views were not enough to stop Gardiner from taking the job. For Garrett, this is as it should be. “One of the things for me that defines a great writer is curiosity. You have to be open to the widest possible range of opinions,” he explains. Spotnitz adds: “The Harry Potter books are deeply humanist, empathetic, enlightened work. People can disagree about other things, but I think they deserve the place they hold in our culture.”
So what advice does Spotnitz have for his former apprentice? “It’s not a task you can approach with fear. It has to be a task you approach with love.” He does not doubt that Gardiner, like her literary likeness Granger, stands ready to cast a spell on HBO viewers.
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