(Los Angeles) Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter in the cinema, said he was “really saddened” by his final break with JK Rowling, after the author’s positions on the subject of transgender people.
“It really saddens me,” the 34-year-old actor said in an interview published this week in the monthly magazine The Atlantic.
“Because when I think of the person I met, the times we saw each other, the books she wrote and the world she imagined, all of that is so full of empathy for me.” , added the Briton, quoted by the magazine.
JK Rowling believes that women’s rights may be threatened by certain demands of transgender rights defenders. The writer denounces in particular the authorization sometimes given to transgender women to access changing rooms, toilets or prisons reserved for women.
Daniel Radcliffe had already publicly dissociated himself in the past from JK Rowling, from whom he said he had not heard from for years. Just like Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter saga.
But his latest comments come after a new controversy on the subject of transgender people.
JK Rowling in fact reacted to the publication last month in England of a long-awaited report, advocating the greatest caution regarding hormonal treatments and puberty inhibitors offered to young people questioning their gender, due in particular to the lack of “data reliable”.
Accused by some of transphobia – which she denies – or on the contrary seen by feminists as a new muse, JK Rowling felt justified by this 400-page study written by an eminent pediatrician, Hilary Cass.
To a user who suggested that she accept possible apologies from Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, the author replied: “The celebrities who made friends with a movement seeking to undermine the hard-won rights of women and who have used their notoriety to promote the transition of minors can save their apologies for traumatized people in gender detransition and vulnerable women who rely on unisex premises.
Asked by The Atlantic On this statement aimed at him, Daniel Radcliffe responded: “I will continue to defend the rights of all LGBTQ people, and I will have no further comment.”