“Harry Potter” star Daniel Radcliffe is opening up about J.K. Rowling‘s continued comments against trans women, saying that it “makes me really sad.”
In a new interview with the Atlantic, Radcliffe said that he has had no direct contact with Rowling since her tweets in June 2020 that were criticized by many as anti-trans.
“It makes me really sad, ultimately,” he said of the situation. “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.”
At the time, Radcliffe decided to issue a statement through the Trevor Project — a LGBTQ charity he’d long been associated with — in which he spoke out against Rowling, saying that “transgender women are women.”
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“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 Atlantic. “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.”
Radcliffe acknowledged that “Harry Potter” “would not have happened without” Rowling, “so nothing in my life would have probably happened the way it is without that person.” But, he continued, “that doesn’t mean that you owe the things you truly believe to someone else for your entire life.”
Last month, Rowling responded to another user on X who said they were “waiting for” Radcliffe and his co-star Emma Watson, who was also outspoken in her disagreement with Rowling’s views, “to give you a very public apology.”
“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,” Rowling wrote.
When asked his response to this, Radcliffe simply said, “I will continue to support the rights of all LGBTQ people, and have no further comment than that.”
Representatives for Rowling declined to comment.