Sadly, however, Mr. Rickman died in 2016 to pancreatic cancer – the same year that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child made its debut. The two events happened only a few months apart from each other.
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As such, when JK Rowling attended a dress rehearsal for the play, she was ambushed with a deep sense of sadness the moment Snape took his place on stage.
In Cursed Child, Snape makes his first appearance with his back turned to the audience. So when Rowling saw the wig of greasy black hair, she had the irrational sense that the moment Snape turned around, she would see her friend again.
JK Rowling handpicked Alan Rickman to be Snape’s actor when the Harry Potter movies were in pre-production. At the time, only the first three books of the Harry Potter series had released, so no one knew about the twist with Snape’s character — no one except Mr. Alan. Rowling let him in on the secret, and Rickman used it as a way to portray the Snape fans got to see in the movies.
Rowling’s tweet about the events reflects what a lot of others felt at the time, and probably still feel now.
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