(LifeSiteNews) – Harry Potter author JK Rowling issued a forceful rebuke of recent comments by left-wing actress Emma Watson, arguing that many elite champions of transgender orthodoxy will never have to experience the real-world consequences of their favored policies.
Watson, who got her big acting break as a child playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film adaptations, has previously clashed with Rowling over their opposing stances on transgenderism. Variety reported that Watson was asked during a recent interview about Rowling’s comments that her and other cast members’ activism “ruin” rewatching the films for her.
“I really don’t believe that by having had that experience and holding the love and support and views that I have mean that I can’t and don’t treasure Jo and the person that I had personal experiences with,” Watson responded. “I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish. To come back to our earlier thing — I just don’t think these things are either or. I think it’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.”
The actress added that “I think the thing I’m most upset about is that a conversation was never made possible,” but she “always will” be open to such a dialogue in the future.
On September 29, Rowling addressed the comments in an X post, prefaced with a clarification that she does not believe any actors who ever portrayed their characters are obligated to agree with her opinions.
“However, Emma and Dan (Radcliffe, who played Harry himself) in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right – nay, obligation – to critique me and my views in public,” she said. “Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.”
Rowling went on to say that for years she refused to respond to any of the Potter actors’ criticism at all due in large part to the “protectiveness” of first getting to know them as child actors overwhelmed by a “big scary film studio.”
I’m seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.
I’m not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should… https://t.co/c0pz19P7jc
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 29, 2025
A turning point, Rowling explained, came with Watson’s 2022 BAFTA film awards speech, where she declared “I’m here for all of the witches,” which was widely interpreted as a gender reference and swipe at Rowling, “but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself.”
“Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence ‘I’m so sorry for what you’re going through’ (she has my phone number),” Rowling recalled. “This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family’s safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames yet thought a one-line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.”
Rowling went on to declare that Watson, due to her early fame and wealth, “has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is. She’ll never need a homeless shelter. She’s never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I’d be astounded if she’s been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her ‘public bathroom’ is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who’s identified into the women’s prison?”
“I wasn’t a multimillionaire at 14,” the author added. “I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women’s rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.”
Rowling, whose Wizarding World is the best-selling book series in the world, was long known as a doctrinaire liberal on most issues, in 2007 going so far as to retroactively add a same-sex relationship to the backstory of Harry’s mentor Albus Dumbledore, despite the character’s sexual attraction not being referenced in the books themselves or their film adaptations (until briefly being alluded to in the third film of the Fantastic Beasts spinoff series).
Even so, Rowling has been deemed a bigot by pro-LGBT activists for refusing to go along with the notions that gender is a social construct that may be changed at will or that life-altering surgical or chemical “transition” procedures are appropriate for confused minors. In recent years, despite intense cultural pressure, she has only grown bolder in opposing the transgender lobby’s detrimental impacts on children as well as actual women.
There are some signs Rowling’s experience has spurred a deeper reconsideration of her values. She recently wrote on social media, ““I used to believe in unilateral nuclear disarmament. I no longer do,” she continued. “I used to believe cannabis was essentially harmless. I no longer do because I’ve witnessed it wreaking havoc on someone I care about’s mental health. I used to believe in assisted dying. I no longer do, largely because I’m married to a doctor who opened my eyes to the possibilities of coercion of sick or vulnerable people.”
“I’ve struggled with religious faith since my mid-teens,” she added. “I appear to have a God-shaped vacuum inside me, but I never seem quite able to make up my mind what to do about it.”
