A certain film series is celebrating its 20th anniversary—“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was released in Nov. 2001, don’t gasp—and one of the things that made the movies so successful was author J.K. Rowling’s insistence that only British actors play her characters (which, with only a couple of exceptions, they did). What was rather uncanny, given a series that eventually included the likes of Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, Maggie Smith and Kelly Macdonald, was that Helen Mirren went among the missing.
As host of the new “Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament of Houses,” the actress claims to be taking her “rightful place” in the Potterverse, and it does feel like an omission is being corrected. At the same time, Ms. Mirren is not taking it too seriously. Which is the right tone to take.