2 hours ago
1
John Lithgow has called JK Rowling’s views on transgender rights “ironic and inexplicable”, saying that backlash to his decision to play Albus Dumbledore in the upcoming Harry Potter series “upsets me”.
Speaking on stage at Rotterdam film festival after a screening of his latest film, Jimpa, the 80-year-old actor was asked about how he felt about Rowling’s views. Rowling serves as an executive producer on the upcoming series, which is being produced by HBO and will be one of the most expensively produced television shows of all time.
“I take the subject extremely seriously,” Lithgow told the audience, reported by the Hollywood Reporter. “JK Rowling has created this amazing canon for young people, young kids’ literature that has jumped into the consciousness of society. Young and old people love Harry Potter and the Harry Potter stories. It’s so much about acceptance. It’s about good versus evil. It’s about kindness versus cruelty. It’s deeply felt.”
“I find it ironic and somewhat inexplicable that Rowling has expressed such views,” he added. “I’ve read about them, and I’ve never met her. She’s not really involved in this production at all. The people who are re-adapting Harry Potter and turning it into an eight-year-long TV series are remarkable. … These are people I really want to work with.”
“It upsets me when people are vehemently opposed to me having anything to do with this,” he added. “But in Potter canon you see no trace of transphobic sensitivity. She has written this meditation of kindness and acceptance. And Dumbledore is a beautiful role.”
When Lithgow was announced as Dumbledore, he revealed that a friend with a trans child had sent him a link to an article entitled: “An open letter to John Lithgow: Please walk away from Harry Potter.”
“It was a hard decision,” Lithgow said, in Rotterdam. “It made me uncomfortable and unhappy that people insisted I walk away from the job. I chose not to do that.”
Variety reported that one audience member expressed their disappointment to Lithgow about his decision to remain in the show, later leaving the room in protest. “I’m perfectly ready for collisions of opinion. I understand it,” Lithgow said afterwards.
In 2020, Rowling posted a 3,600-word online statement criticising proposed changes to gender recognition laws by detailing her own experience of sexual assault and domestic violence. She has stated she opposes “the new trans activism” and opposes cisgender women sharing single-sex spaces with trans women, saying it would mean women were forced to “open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside”.
She donated £70,000 to For Women Scotland, the campaign group who played a key role in bringing about the challenge of how a woman is defined in law, and founded the JK Rowling Women’s Fund, which supports individuals and organisations “fighting to retain women’s sex-based rights”.
Other actors in the Harry Potter series, including Nick Frost, who plays Hagrid, and Paapa Essiedu, who plays Snape, have distanced themselves from Rowling’s views since signing on to the show. Last year Rowling said she would not fire Essiedu for signing a petition in favour of trans rights, writing on social media: “I don’t have the power to sack an actor from the series and I wouldn’t exercise it if I did. I don’t believe in taking away people’s jobs or livelihoods because they hold legally protected beliefs that differ from mine.”
The lead actors in the original Potter films, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, as well as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them star Eddie Redmayne, have all made critical statements distancing themselves from Rowling.
The new Potter series is due to premiere in 2027 and, according to HBO, will be a “faithful adaptation” of the books by Rowling. The eight feature films based on the books were released between 2001 and 2011, and the series has a similarly ambitious timeframe, with Casey Bloys, chair and CEO of HBO and Max Content, saying it would run for “10 consecutive years”.
Lithgow alluded to this in Rotterdam, joking: “I’m the oldest person in this entire room, just turned 80. And yet I signed a contract – I will be playing Dumbledore for the next eight years! I absolutely have to keep at it. I felt: ‘Wow! That means I will live to be 88.’ I have that in writing.”
