Daniel Radcliffe defends his stance on transgender rights amid fallout with JK Rowling

A vocal supporter of the LGBTQ+ community publicly, Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe recently said he is disappointed in JK Rowling’s anti-trans comments over the years. In a new interview, Daniel, who became a star with the Harry Potter films that were based on the fictional world created in Rowling’s books, said, “It makes me really sad, ultimately.”

He told The Atlantic, “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.”

It was in 2020 during the time of Covid outbreak that JK Rowling shared anti-transgender remarks. Among the first people to disassociate from the novelist was Daniel Radcliffe. He raised his voice for the trans community and also wrote an essay soon after titled, “transgender women are women.”

In the interview, the actor said, “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. 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.”

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Earlier this month, JK Rowling replied to a comment on social media that said they were waiting for Daniel Radcliffe and Harry Potter co-star Emma Watson to give the author a public apology.

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To this, she said, “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.”

In a reply to that comment, Daniel told The Atlantic, “I will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people, and have no further comment than that.”

(With inputs from agencies)