'Harry Potter' star Daniel Radcliffe says J.K. Rowling’s anti-Trans views make him 'sad'
"Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe is opening up about author J.K. Rowling's anti-Trans views.
Radcliffe opened up to The Atlantic in an interview published Tuesday about Rowling's anti-Trans views and his own work for LGBTQ+ rights, including with LGBTQ+ youth advocacy organization The Trevor Project.
“It would have seemed like, I don’t know, immense cowardice to me to not say something,” Radcliffe told the outlet. “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.”
J.K. Rowling says 'Harry Potter' stars who've criticized her anti-trans views 'can save their apologies'
Rowling recently responded to a fan’s post on X about feeling "safe in the knowledge" that she would forgive "Harry Potter" stars such as Radcliffe and Emma Watson, who have denounced the author's anti-trans rhetoric. Rowling wrote, "Not safe, I'm afraid."
"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," her post continued.
'It makes me really sad,' Daniel Radcliffe says about J.K. Rowling's anti-Trans views
Radcliffe told The Atlantic that he hasn't had direct contact with Rowling as she ramped up anti-Trans rhetoric with her now-infamous June 2020 tweets that many deemed as anti-Trans.
“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," he told The Atlantic.
J.K. Rowling calls for own arrest for anti-trans rhetoric amid Scotland's new hate crime law
Radcliffe, who played the title character in the "Harry Potter" film series, also addressed his perception of a narrative presented by the British press that Radcliffe, Watson and their "Potter" co-star Rubert Grint as "ungrateful" for calling out Rowling.
“There’s a version of ‘Are these three kids ungrateful brats?’ that people have always wanted to write, and they were finally able to. So, good for them, I guess," Radcliffe said before noting that "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.”
Just last month, Rowling called for her own arrest in Scotland's anti-hate crime law and tested the law by listing 10 trans women, including a convicted rapist, sex abusers and high-profile activists on X, saying they were men.
"In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls," she wrote in a lengthy thread.
Contributing: KiMi Robinson
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Daniel Radcliffe: J.K. Rowling's anti-Trans views make him 'sad'
