Daniel Radcliffe: J.K. Rowling's Transgender Stance 'Makes Me Sad'

Actor Daniel Radcliffe has directly responded to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s stance on transgender radicalism.

Last month, J.K. Rowling sparked conversations on her social media feeds Thursday when she celebrated a recent BBC report showing the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) admitted gender services for minors was based on “remarkably weak” evidence.

Later, a commenter said Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson should “give you a very public apology … safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them.”

“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,” she responded.

Daniel Radcliffe publicly threw J.K. Rowling under the bus in 2020 when he said “Transgender women are women” after she had been labeled a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) by LGBTQ extremists.

“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 said. “According to The Trevor Project, 78% of transgender and nonbinary youth reported being the subject of discrimination due to their gender identity.”

Radcliffe had never directly addressed J.K. Rowling until this week when he told The Atlantic that her comments made him “sad.”

“It makes me really sad, ultimately,” Radcliffe said. “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.”

Radcliffe said that he feels it would have been cowardly for him not to say something when Rowling first spoke out.

“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,” he said. “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 did, however, say that the Harry Potter franchise (which made him a millionaire) “would not have happened without” Rowling.

“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,” he said.

Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.