BRITISH actor Daniel Radcliffe talked about J.K. Rowling‘s ongoing anti-transgender comments, saying that he was “really sad” about the author’s hard stance against transgender rights.
Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, the main character in the successful film adaptation of Rowling’s bestselling books, is not in good terms with the author because of her transphobia.
In an interview with The Atlantic, he said that “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 confirmed that he does not have any contact with Rowling since she began making the comments.
In 2020, Radcliffe was one of the first to speak up in defense of the trans community. He wrote an essay in Trevor project, an LGBTQ+ youth suicide-prevention hotline, saying, “Transgender women are women.”
He clarified that Rowling’s views are not necessarily shared by people who worked in the Harry Potter franchise.
“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 said.
Rowling has been receiving backlash from her transphobic tweet in 2020.
Last month, Rowling said in a statement that she wouldn’t forgive actress Emma Watson and Radcliffe for speaking up against her.
She wrote, “Celebs who cosied 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.”
Radcliffe responded to critics who claimed that he should be grateful to Rowling because she wrote the story behind the films that made him famous. “But that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life,” he said.
