“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling responded to Emma Watson’s recent comments about their relationship, writing on X, “Adults can’t expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend’s assassination, then assert their right to the former friend’s love.”
Rowling posted a long tweet Monday, several days after Watson participated in a 2-hour episode of the “Jay Shetty Podcast” last week. During her appearance on the podcast, Watson spoke about how her experiences playing Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” films made a lasting impact on her. She also, once again, made her disagreements with Rowling’s anti-trans views clear.
At the same time, Watson insisted that said rift in her relationship with Rowling does not mean that she can’t and doesn’t “treasure” the “Harry Potter” author and the memories they created together. Rowling has, however, taken issue with Watson’s comments.
“I’m not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created,” Rowling noted at the top of her tweet Monday. “The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.”
The successful author reiterated that Watson and her fellow “Harry Potter” co-stars are allowed to hold whatever opinions about gender identity that they wish and that they do not deserve to receive any threats as a result of their beliefs.
“However, Emma and Dan [Radcliffe] 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,” Rowling wrote. “Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.”
Rowling said she has found it hard to shake the “protectiveness” she developed for Radcliffe, Watson and co. when they were child actors working on the “Potter” movies. Apparently, that all began to change after Watson’s 2022 BAFTAs speech in which she said she was there for “all the witches,” in both an apparent dig at Rowling and an expression of Watson’s own pro-trans views.
“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 said of the aftermath of Watson’s speech. “This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak.”
“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,” the author’s tweet continued. “Like other people who’ve never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma 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,” Rowling continued. “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?”
Unlike Watson, Rowling remarked that she was not a “millionaire at fourteen” but poor when she was an adult writing the book that later made Watson 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 added. The author subsequently confessed that she might not have said anything about the state of her and Watson’s relationship had the actress not publicly done so last week.
“Adults can’t expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend’s assassination, then assert their right to the former friend’s love, as though the friend was in fact their mother,” Rowling concluded. “Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public – but I have the same right, and I’ve finally decided to exercise it.”
The “Potter” creator’s tweet comes days after she praised a video spoofing Watson’s podcast appearance.
