The Big Picture

• Alan Rickman received exclusive insight into Snape's background from J.K. Rowling, allowing him to capture the Harry Potter character's soul perfectly.
• Rowling confirmed that she shared a crucial piece of information about Snape with Rickman, involving the word "always," which holds deep emotional significance.
• Rickman's portrayal of Snape showcased the character's duality and constant mourning, convincing the audience of his true intentions and selling the big reveal in the series finale.

Have you ever had a really big secret? A secret that you knew you had to keep for the sake of the greater good? It's a heavy burden to carry, and one that could spectacularly blow up in your face if it ever got out. This is a situation that the late great Alan Rickman had to embrace being in when he first took on one of his most iconic roles, that of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series. Almost every actor in the cast only had knowledge of the first four books and the first film script at their disposal, but Rickman got a very exclusive peek into the future. Thanks to a particular person with rare insider knowledge, Rickman was given the perfect insight to properly capture the soul of a man who remained endlessly fascinating due to how steadfastly he refused to show us anything.

J.K. Rowling Told Alan Rickman About Snape's Backstory

After Alan Rickman died, the diaries that he had consistently written since 1993 were published in book form as Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman, and it provides an inside look at his thought process and perception of the course of his vast career. In it, he states that on October 7th of 2000, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling talked to Rickman about advice on understanding Snape better, per his earlier request, and that she let him in on "a few glimpses into Snape's background. Talking to her is talking to someone who lives these stories, not invents them." While Rickman doesn't delve into the specifics of what she said, she at least said something along the lines of "well, when he was young, you see, this, that and the other happened." This, by itself, isn't really enough to make a concrete claim off of, as we can't discern from his writing what "background" is even referring to.

In 2016, in the wake of Rickman's death, author and podcaster Joanna Robinson wrote a piece for Vanity Fair about how J.K. Rowling essentially confirmed what it was she shared with Alan Rickman all those years ago. On Twitter, a fan asked Rowling “Will you tell us the piece of information that you told Alan Rickman about Severus Snape? Or will that forever be a secret?” Rowling tweeted that her response was "I told Alan what lies behind the word 'always'." Out of context, to somebody with no knowledge or experience with Harry Potter, this tells you almost nothing. But for those who have gone on the impossible-to-replicate journey, that one word alone will be enough to send you into an emotional tailspin and get you thinking about all the memories that you've held onto thanks to Rickman's performance.

Alan Rickman Knew Snape's Emotional Motivation All Along

Snape remains largely an enigma for most of the Harry Potter film series, growing in mystique due to how willfully he pushes away from others. As he scuttled away into the shadows, we leaned forward, wanting to know even more than the little we knew. As far as he wanted most students and teachers to know, he was nothing more than a stone-faced, surly, hard-to-please instructor. That is, until Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is around, in which case he ramps up his pettiness, letting his mask slip a little and becoming more spiteful, overtly angry, and downright mean-spirited to Harry, for no discernible reason. Since we never see Snape do anything overtly evil for most of the series, and he always has a knack for getting Harry out of serious trouble (while never once warming up to him), it created a mystery as to what was really going on with him. This wouldn't be revealed until the final film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, where we learn that when Snape was a young student at Hogwarts, he was in unrequited love with Harry's mom, Lily, and was bullied by Harry's dad, James. When Lily was killed by Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), Snape found her body, and it devastated him, and he stepped up to protect Harry from Voldemort throughout his life. This tormented him, as Harry looked just like James, the person he hated most, but also had the eyes of Lily, the person he loved most.

This was the secret that Alan Rickman was told in confidence by J.K. Rowling all those years ago, at the start of production on the first film. This was what he needed to know to unlock the character and play him truthfully, and you can feel it permeating every movie. From his first meeting with Harry in potions class, locking eyes with Harry and instantly being overcome with the memory of his parents, sizing Harry up to see how competent a student he'll be. Rickman's style of line delivery was notorious for how slowly he spoke and how far he would space his words out, and it fits perfectly with Snape's emotional constipation and air of constant mourning. Snape was already a person with few friends and fewer social skills, the adult equivalent of the kid who never wanted to leave his room or turn the lights on. Signing up to be an unofficial bodyguard for a kid whom you've decided to hate for reasons you'll never share doesn't make him inherently sympathetic, but Rickman's subtle evocation of the duality of motivation bubbling underneath Snape's responses does a massive service to selling the payoff that the series attempts in its grand finale.

Alan Rickman Sold Us on His Big Reveal in 'Harry Potter'

When going back and rewatching the Harry Potter series now, it may seem "obvious" that Snape was on the right side of the Wizard war all along, but the series does a remarkable job of never overplaying its hand as to Snape's true allegiance. If someone immediately establishes that they're impossible to read and acts like a bully to everyone he encounters, it makes it harder to figure out which behaviors he engages in are actual signs of evil and which are just garden-variety red flags. For all the times Snape berated and cut down and sometimes laid hands on Harry, there were still moments where he unambiguously protected Harry from imminent danger, like when he shielded him from a werewolf in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. That's a bold storytelling risk, to have an important character spend so much time onscreen not only be actively closed off but to be openly antagonistic towards the person we're supposed to be most emotionally tied to.

The filmmakers ran the risk of alienating the audience from a person who is a huge key to the final punch that sends it all home, making us not care at all about the true intentions of someone so seemingly odious. The only way they could mitigate that risk was to cast Alan Rickman, who could make up for the character's outward impenetrability with the quivering subtext of his true intentions. The camera serves as an X-ray of an actor's true essence, and Snape could only become the true secret savior of the series with Alan Rickman consciously projecting the lonely boy who never let go of the one person he always loved.

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