Mick Hartley

Daniel Radcliffe has spoken out about his decision to stick the knife into JK Rowling – the woman who made his career:

The Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has said it was “really important” for him to speak out against the franchise’s author JK Rowling over transgender rights.

Radcliffe, 33, who was propelled to stardom by the Potter movies, claimed he would not have been able to look himself in the mirror had he not made a statement.

He asserted his support for trans people in 2020 after a series of tweets by Rowling, who was accused of being transphobic while highlighting the erasure of the word “women” from some parts of the media.

In an interview with the website IndieWire, published on Tuesday, Radcliffe said that many young, gay and transgender fans of the fantasy series had been “hurt” by Rowling’s tweets. He said he had spoken out to show that not everyone involved with Harry Potter felt the same.

“The reason I felt very, very much as though I needed to say something when I did was because, particularly since finishing Potter, I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge amount of identification with Potter on that,” he said. “And so, seeing them hurt on that day I was like, I wanted them to know that not everybody in the franchise felt that way. And that was really important.”

His argument is somewhat weakened by the fact that Rowling has never said anything transphobic: she just believes in the reality of biological sex.

Tom Slater in the Spectator:

Radcliffe’s pomposity and self-regard is breathtaking. ‘I felt very, very much as though I needed to say something’, he says. ‘I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge amount of identification with Potter… I wanted them to know that not everybody in the franchise felt that way.’

You would have thought he’d faced down the cops at Selma. What he actually did was join a pile-on against Rowling after she took to Twitter to mock the absurd phrase ‘people who menstruate’, one of the many new ‘trans-inclusive’ terms for women. (Rowling fears, as many feminists do, that due to gender ideology the very notion of womanhood is being erased.)

Anyone who has bothered to read what Rowling has actually said about gender will know she is not a transphobic bigot. We have tumbled so far down the rabbit hole that to denounce a beloved children’s author, while she is being demonised and bombarded with rape threats, is to be noble.

Harry and co should be ashamed of themselves.

My own theory – which is mine – from a couple of years back:

My theory about Daniel Radcliffe is that he secretly resents Rowling's influence on his life. He was heading for a decent career as a chartered accountant or estate agent when he was dragged into the Harry Potter world simply by his looks, with that stupid round face and glasses. Ever since then he's had to struggle as an actor when it's quite obvious to everyone that he's no good at it. As a result his life is a succession of public embarrassments. Without Rowling he would have settled down in Pinner by now to a nice quiet suburban life.