J.K. Rowling Dishes on the Real Reason for Her Absence from HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’ Reunion Special

“I was asked to do it and I decided not to,” the author said

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Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

J.K. Rowling finally addressed why she did not appear on HBO’s Harry Potter Reunion Special: The author says she was invited, but decided not to participate.

“I was asked to be on that and I didn’t want to do it,” the “Harry Potter” author said on a radio show with Graham Norton released Saturday, noting that she thought it was about the films, more than the books. “No one said ‘Don’t come,’ I was asked to do it and I decided not to.”

Rowling had interjected Norton’s remark that she was excluded from “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts,” and Rowling clarified that she, in fact, was invited.

Many speculated that Rowling was excluded light of comments about transgender people that enraged many in the “Harry Potter” community, including cast members: Daniel Radcliffe wrote an essay on “The Trevor Project,” an LGBTQ suicide prevention organization, and Emma Watson tweeted her support for trans people in June 2020.

In July, quidditch, the real-life game played by wizards in “Harry Potter,” cut ties with Rowling and the franchise by rebranding.

Rowling told Norton that she still had a relationship with some of the young actors, noting that she has a better relationship with “some more than others” “but that was always the case.”

As for social media as a whole, Rowling says she likes the “pub argument aspect” of it: “that can be a fun thing to do.”

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