Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has hit out at Emma Watson in a lengthy statement on X, saying: “She has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is.”
Watson, who famously played Hermione Granger in the film adaptations of Rowling’s books, recently starred on a podcast interview with Jay Shetty where she voiced her “deepest wish” that she be permitted to separate her relationship with the author from their opposing views on trans rights.
Rowling, a staunch advocate for anti-trans policies in the U.K., has regularly come under fire for her transphobia. She has often been publicly critcized over her politics in recent years, notably by the main trio of Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, who have expressed support for the trans community.
But some were surprised to see Watson make some more neutral comments last week. She told Shetty: “I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish to come back to our earlier thing. I just don’t think these things are either or. It’s my deepest wish that people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.”
However, Rowling swiftly used the interview as social media ammo and poked fun at Watson. She responded to a clip by comedian Intel Lady, who made a spoof video out of Watson’s comments. Rowling said on X: “I’m already missing @intel_lady’s Angela Rayner, but I’m here for ALL the spoofs.”
On Monday, Rowling clarified her stance further. The writer, again, took to X and said: “I’m not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. 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. Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn’t want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.”
“However,” she continued, “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. She said the pair have continued to “assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created,” years after Harry Potter drew to a close.
“When you’ve known people since they were ten years old it’s hard to shake a certain protectiveness,” said Rowling, who explained it wasn’t until quite recently that she’d managed to “throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio.”
Rowling went on to say that over the years she has “repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically.” At the height of “death, rape and torture threats” thrown at Rowling, she added, “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’.” The author caveated this statement with the claim that Watson has her phone number.
Later on in the post, Rowling also said Watson “has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is […] I wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen,” she continued. “I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous.”
“She’ll never need a homeless shelter,” said the author about the Little Women star, who went on to defend her anti-trans beliefs. “She’s never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I’d be astounded if she’s been in a high street changing room since childhood. 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?”
The post ended with: “The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me — a change of tack I suspect she’s adopted because she’s noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was — I might never have been this honest.”
Said Rowling: “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.”
Watson received backlash herself for the comments she made on Shetty’s podcast. One user earned 13,000 likes on a post on X that read: “Saying you can ‘still love’ Rowling while she openly attacks trans people just shows you are insulated from the damage she causes… That’s not grace, it is privilege!!”
Read the full response from Rowling below.