Daniel Radcliffe said it was “important” to him to speak out in defense of transgender people after author J.K. Rowling made a series of comments widely seen as transphobic.
The actor, known for playing Rowling’s boy wizard Harry Potter in the films based on her books, discussed his support for trans rights in an interview with IndieWire.
“The reason I was felt very, very much as though I needed to say something when I did was because, particularly since finishing Potter, I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge amount of identification with Potter on that,” he said. “And so seeing them hurt on that day … I wanted them to know that not everybody in the franchise felt that way.”
Radcliffe wrote an open letter in 2020 expressing his views on trans people after Rowling posted a series of tweets about the trans community. In one, she mocked a website for using the phrase “people who menstruate” instead of “women”; in another, she wrote, “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.”
In Radcliffe’s letter, posted on the website for the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that provides crisis support to young LGBTQ+ people, he wrote, “Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.”
Radcliffe told IndieWire, “It was really important as I’ve worked with the Trevor Project for more than 10 years, and so I don’t think I would’ve been able to look myself in the mirror had I not said anything. But it’s not mine to guess what’s going on in someone else’s head.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
