Daniel Radcliffe ‘really sad’ about JK Rowling’s stance on trans rights

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has made a rare comment on JK Rowling’s views on trans people after the author suggested she would not forgive Radcliffe’s support of the community.

Last month, during one of JK Rowling’s frequent online rants about the trans community, one follower suggested she would forgive Harry Potter actors Radcliffe and Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger, if they were to make a “public apology” regarding their support for trans rights.

The controversial writer of the wizards and witches novel series stated that the actors could “save their apologies” for “traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single-sex spaces”.

Yet it seems that Rowling need not worry about whether she will or won’t accept Radcliffe’s apology, as it turns out that he has no intention of offering one.

Speaking to The Atlantic, Radcliffe, who just received his first Tony Award nomination for his turn in Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along, affirmed that he would “continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people”.

The actor continued by stating that he has not had any direct contact with Rowling, but reiterated that her views on the trans community make him “sad”.

“It makes me really sad, ultimately… because I do look at the person that I met, the times that we met, and the books that she wrote, and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic,” he explained.

In 2020, at the beginning of Rowling’s tenure on the frontlines of so-called gender-critical feminism, she mocked an article which used the term “people who menstruate”.

Days later, she published her notorious “TERF Wars” essay, in which she outlined her “concerns” with activists fighting for trans equality.

At the time, Radlicffe issued a statement through LGBTQ+ suicide prevention charity the Trevor Project, in which he assured his fans that he knows “trans women are women” and shared his hope that Rowling’s views wouldn’t impact LGBTQ+ fans who had cherished memories of the Harry Potter franchise.

Radcliffe has now explained why he felt it important to issue the statement at the time, saying: “I’d worked with the Trevor Project for 12 years and it would have seemed like, I don’t know, immense cowardice to me to not say something.

“I wanted to try and help people that had been negatively affected by the comments… And to say that if those are Jo’s views, then they are not the views of everybody associated with the Potter franchise.”

Ever since he and his fellow Harry Potter stars Watson and Rupert Grint (who played Ron Weasley) have made their detachment from Rowling’s views clear, scores of her fans have declared them “ungrateful” due to the role the author had in starting their careers.

Yet for Radcliffe, the suggestion that you have to agree with someone’s views simply because they helped your career is an odd one.

“Jo, obviously Harry Potter would not have happened without her, so nothing in my life would have probably happened the way it is without that person,” he explained.

“But that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life.”