Daniel Radcliffe is saddened by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s continued anti-transgender comments, as well as her support for others with transphobic views.
Daniel Radcliffe, who earned a Tony Award nomination on April 30, said in a new interview with The Atlantic that he hasn’t spoken to Rowling, 58, in years. Radcliffe starred as the titular hero in all eight Potter films, based on her bestselling novels, from 2001 to 2011.
“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,” Daniel Radcliffe said of Rowling and her controversial comments about gender.
“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 added. “But that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life.”
Radcliffe also responded to Rowling recently writing on social media that he and his costars Emma Watson and Rupert Grint can “save their apologies” and she wouldn’t forgive them for their differing points of view. Radcliffe told the outlet: “I will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people, and have no further comment than that.”
Daniel Radcliffe was among the first Potter cast members to speak out against Rowling’s anti-transgender remarks back in June 2020.
At the time, Radcliffe wrote in an essay for the Trevor Project that “transgender women are women.”
The actor told The Atlantic in the new interview why he felt compelled to address Rowling’s comments 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 said. “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.”