When Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) first arrives at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), he learns pretty quickly that there are cliques, just like at a regular British boarding school. Namely, he met sour Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton)very clearly one of Hogwarts' aspiring bullies. Draco mocked the timid Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), immediately alienating Harry. Over the course of the subsequent Harry Potter films, Draco became worse and worse, going from being a mere bully to being a soldier of the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), who fought against the idea of ​​allowing "spoilt blood" into the world's schools of magicians.

For most of the Harry Potter films, Draco was joined by a pair of snarky sidekicks named Crabbe and Goyle. The shorter Crabbe was played by Jamie Veilett and the taller Goyle by Josh Herdman. Crabbe and Goyle always caused minor headaches for Harry, Ron and Hermione (Emma Watson) and served as lowly villains for most of the series. Crabbe, however, only appeared in the first six films and was mysteriously absent from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts I and II. Goyle, meanwhile, remained.

As it happens, the character was cut due to a real-life incident with actor Jamie Waylett. It seems that in 2009, when the actor was 20 years old, he was pulled over by the police who found a large amount of weed in his car. Officers returned to him to investigate and discovered he was running his own small weed farm. Growing marijuana at the time was still very much illegal, and Waylett was sentenced to community service. All this was after an incident in 2006, when Waylett was still a teenager when he was accused of using cocaine. The two paired incidents led to Veilett being cut from the final two Harry Potter films. The weed incident it was covered by the London Gazette.

It hardly seems fair, but I guess Warner Bros. - which distributed the Harry Potter films - wanted to keep the stigma of Waylett's drug entanglement out of the public eye. The films already skewed more adult, with some being rated PG-13 and featuring multiple murders, but Waylett may have been too much of a liability. The filmmakers, instead of recasting Crabbe's role, simply ditched the character entirely. Goyle returned without his compatriot.

That wasn't the end of Waylett's legal troubles either. In 2011, the actor took part in the infamous riots in London that broke out after police shot and killed a man named Mark Duggan. Veillet appears to have taken to the streets in protest. He was caught on camera holding an unlit molotov cocktail. He was arrested and convicted in the British courts, a case that was covered by the BBC in 2012. He didn't do any material damage, but his involvement was enough to put him in jail. He was sentenced to two years.

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

Crabbe's fate, as it appeared in the Harry Potter novels, is less rosy than Waylet's. In the books, Crabbe, as Draco Malfoy's henchman, also became a dark wizard, seeking forbidden killing spells. In one dark scene, Crabbe attempted to use one of the listed killing spells, but failed in the casting, accidentally killing himself. Perhaps ironically, the spell—fire-based magic—burned so hot that it destroyed one of the Horcruxes, a magical trinket that held a piece of Lord Voldemort's soul. When the Horcrux is destroyed, Voldemort dies some more. Wavelet didn't get a death scene, but Crabbe, according to Potter canon, didn't have a dignified death.

As for Josh Herdman, who played Goyle, he continued to act, finding plenty of work on British television. He was in eight episodes of Marcella and most recently in two episodes of the Star Wars series Andor. In film, Herdman appeared in several British productions and had a small part in the 2018 film Robin Hood with Taron Egerton. Tom Felton, meanwhile, starred in stage productions in London's West End theater and enjoyed a prolific career in film and television. He's been in films as close to Shakespeare as Ophelia and light fantasy like The Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting.

Most of the children from the Harry Potter films have admirably continued to hone their craft and continue to work in interesting productions. Veillet, meanwhile, seems to be fine with being out.