Daniel Radcliffe has been a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community and is disappointed in J.K. Rowling‘s anti-trans comments over the years.
In a new interview, Radcliffe shared how he feels about Rowling’s repeated shots at the trans community.
“It makes me really sad, ultimately,” he told The Atlantic, adding, “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.”
In 2020, Rowling shared anti-transgender remarks, and Radcliffe was among the first Harry Potter cast members to raise his voice in defense of the trans community. Radcliffe wrote an essay for the Trevor Project saying that “transgender women are women.”
“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,” Radcliffe told the publication about the reason he penned the essay. “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.”
Earlier this month, Rowling replied to a comment on social media that said they were waiting for Radcliffe and Harry Potter co-star Emma Watson to give the author a public apology. The social media post came after the British government shared a report that made Rowling find validation in her anti-trans rhetoric.
Rowling 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 traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces.”
The Atlantic asked Radcliffe for comment on that message, to which the actor replied, “I will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people, and have no further comment than that.”
Radcliffe also replied to critics who said he was ungrateful for opposing Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, which inspired the film series in which he starred.
“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. But that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life,” he said.
