Why Harry Potter's Vincent Crabbe Actor Was Cut From The Movies

When Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) first arrived at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (2001), he learned pretty quickly that there were cliques, just like in a regular British boarding school. Notably, he met the sour-tempered Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton), very clearly one of Hogwarts' aspiring bullies. Draco mocked the timid Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), immediately alienating Harry. Throughout the following films in the "Harry Potter" series, Draco would become worse and worse, moving from mere bullying to becoming a soldier for the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), who fought against the notion of allowing "tainted blood" into the world's wizard schools.

For most of the "Harry Potter" films, Draco was joined by a pair of sniveling sidekicks named Crabbe and Goyle. The shorter Crabbe was played by Jamie Waylett, and the taller Goyle was played by Josh Herdman. Crabbe and Goyle were always causing small headaches for Harry, Ron, and Hermione (Emma Watson), and served as low-key villains for the bulk of the series. Crabbe, however, only appeared in the first six of the movies and was mysteriously absent from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" Parts I and II. Goyle, meanwhile, remained.

As it so happens, the character was cut because of a real-life incident with actor Jamie Waylett. It seems that in 2009 when the actor was 20, he was pulled over by the police who found a great deal of weed in his car. The cops went back to his place to investigate and found that he was operating his own small weed farm. Growing marijuana was still highly illegal at the time, and Waylett was sentenced to community service. This was all after a 2006 incident, back when Waylett was still a teen when he was accused of using cocaine. The two incidents paired led to Waylett being cut from the final two "Harry Potter" movies. The weed incident was covered by the London Paper.

It hardly seems fair, but I suppose Warner Bros. — which distributed the Harry Potter movies — wanted to keep the stigma of Waylett's drug entanglements out of the public eye. The films were already skewing more adult, with some of them being rated PG-13, and featuring multiple murders, but Waylett may have been too much of a liability. The filmmakers, rather than recast the role of Crabbe, simply dropped the character altogether. Goyle returned without his compatriot. 

That wasn't the end of Waylett's legal problems either. In 2011, the actor participated in the notorious London riots that sprung up after the police shot and killed a man named Mark Duggan. It seems that Waylett, in protest, took to the streets. He was captured on camera holding an unlit Molotov cocktail. He was arrested and sentenced in the British courts, a case that was covered by the BBC in 2012. He didn't do any property damage, but his participation was enough to land him in prison. He was sentenced to two years. 

Waylett's acting career consists only of Harry Potter projects. His only six movies were Harry Potter movies, and he played Crabbe in two "Harry Potter" video games. He also appeared on several talk shows ... to talk about Harry Potter. It seems that the actor's legal troubles have, at least to date, stymied his professional screen career. In 2023, the Mirror caught up with Waylett, and he said he's not seeking any more acting gigs and was happy to be hired for personalized videos on Cameo. His last movie was "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." Although out of the game, he still feels he is, in his words, a "Slytherin for life."

The fate of Crabbe, as he appeared in the Harry Potter novels, is less rosy than that of Waylett's. In the books, Crabbe, being a flunky of Draco Malfoy, also became a dark wizard, looking into forbidden killing spells. In one bleak scene, Crabbe tried to use one of said killing spells, but botched its casting, accidentally killing himself. Perhaps ironically, the spell — a fire-based spell — burned so hot that it destroyed one of the Horcruxes, a magical trinket that held a piece of Lord Voldemort's soul. When a Horcrux is destroyed, Voldemort dies a little more. Waylett didn't get a death scene, but Crabbe, by Potter canon, didn't have a dignified death. 

As for Josh Herdman, who played Goyle, he has continued to act, finding a lot of work on British television. He was in eight episodes of "Marcella," and, more recently, in two episodes of the "Star Wars" series "Andor." In film, Herdman has appeared in several British productions and had a small part in the 2018 "Robin Hood" film with Taron Egerton. Tom Felton, meanwhile, has been starring in production on stage at London's West End theater and has enjoyed a prolific career in film and TV. He has been in Shakespeare-adjacent films like "Ophelia" and light fantasies like "A BAbysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting." 

Most of the kids from the Harry Potter movies have admirably continued to hone their craft and continue to work in interesting productions. Waylett, meanwhile, seems okay to be out of the game.