Ten points for “Harry Potter and The Cursed Child”!

A casting announcement from the highly anticipated Harry Potter play reported by The Daily Mail on Sunday revealed that unlike in the books’ film adaptations, leading lady Hermione Granger will be portrayed by a person of color: Swaziland-born actress Noma Dumezweni.

“Cursed Child” representatives haven’t yet confirmed the casting choice to The Huffington Post, but the play’s official Twitter account retweeted a Daily Mail reporter’s announcement:

Dumezweni also appeared to give the casting announcement a nod with some choice emojis:

The play, which is set to hit the stage in London next summer, will also star actors Jamie Parker as Harry Potter and Paul Thornley as Ron Weasley, The Daily Mail reported. Written in part by Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling, the production is being billed as “the eighth story,” set 19 years after the conclusion of the seventh book.

So what’s the big deal about a black woman portraying Hermione, the series’ most overachieving witch? First, there’s no consensus that the character was ever supposed to be white in the first place — the Harry Potter series never mentions her skin color.

And, Like Michael B. Jordan portraying Johnny Storm in the new “Fantastic Four” movie and Idris Elba portraying a Norse god in “Thor,” Dumezweni’s Hermione will challenge audiences that still expect white as the default race.

“Fans often seem to believe that if a character is changed from white to black, they will no longer be able to identify with that superhero,” Aaron Kashtan, who teaches a course on transmedia storytelling at Georgia Tech, told The Atlantic last year. Kashtan called backlash to Jordan’s casting a type of “unconscious or overt racism.”

“This default assumption of whiteness is no longer acceptable,” Kashtan said.

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