Daniel Radcliffe has responded after JK Rowling said she’d struggle to forgive him for supporting the trans community.
The war of words between the two started when the author, who created one of the biggest movie franchises in the world but is more recently known for her controversial opinions on trans issues, stated that celebrities who supported the transgender community can “save their apologies.”
Taking to Twitter on April 10, the 58-year-old shared a recent independent review “of the medical evidence for transitioning children,” claiming that “kids have been irreversibly harmed, and thousands are complicit, not just medics, but the celebrity mouthpieces, unquestioning media, and cynical corporations.”
Replying to the comment, a follower said: “Just waiting for Dan and Emma to give you a very public apology… safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them…” to which the author responded: “Not safe, I’m afraid.”
She continued: “Celebs who cozied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatized detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single-sex spaces.”
While both Radcliffe and Watson have been vocal about their support for the trans community, they have not specifically spoken out about their views on the medical transitioning of children.
Regardless, it seems as though the damage is done on Rowling’s side.
Now, just two weeks after the statement on social media, Radcliffe, best known for his portrayal of Harry Potter in Rowling’s iconic franchise, has addressed the remarks.
In a new interview with The Atlantic published yesterday (April 30), he said that he hasn’t spoken to the writer in “years.”
“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,” Radcliffe said of Rowling’s controversial comments.
“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 noted. “But that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life.”
When addressing the fact that the 58-year-old would not forgive him, or his co-stars, for their differing perspectives on the issue, he said: “I will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people, and have no further comment than that.”
Radcliffe was among the first Potter cast members to speak out against Rowling’s remarks on transgender issues back in June 2020, where she claimed that trans women weren’t “real women.”
At the time, he wrote an essay for the Trevor Project in which he expressed the importance of acceptance and allowing people to live their truths.
The actor told The Atlantic why he felt the need to address Rowling’s divisive comments back in 2020.
“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,” he stated.
“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,” he added.
