Daniel Radcliffe addresses controversy revolving J.K. Rowling

This week, Daniel Radcliffe addressed J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, about her anti-trans attitudes, stating that it "makes me really sad" that she continues to criticize the transgender community.

Rowling has been in the news a lot lately for her social media activism against the transgender rights movement. Most recently, she addressed a four-year British investigation that concluded there was insufficient evidence to support the long-term safety of puberty-blocking interventions for transgender individuals.

“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 s*x spaces,” Rowling responded to this on social media, claiming that Radcliffe and his Harry Potter co-stars, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, would not be forgiven for having endorsed transgender healthcare.

“It makes me really sad, ultimately,” Radcliffe told The Atlantic of Rowling’s comments this week, adding that he hasn’t had any direct contact with the author since the beginning of her first speaking out against the trans community. “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.”

In 2020, Radcliffe wrote a statement for the Trevor Project endorsing the trans community, stating, “I realize that certain press outlets will probably want to paint this as in-fighting between J.K. Rowling and myself, but that is really not what this is about, nor is it what’s important right now,” adding that “transgender women are women.”

“To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you,” he also wrote. “I really hope that you don’t entirely lose what was valuable in these stories to you.”