JKR lets rip.
I’m seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.
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, Emma and Dan 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. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.
When you’ve known people since they were ten years old it’s hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn’t managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I’ve repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn’t want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.
Whereas Emma was fine with JKR being hounded, including because of things she Emma said. She has to have been fine with it, because otherwise she would have refrained.
The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma’s ‘all witches’ speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. 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). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family’s safety. 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.
A one line expression of concern from her in private, having backstabbed JKR in public. Yeah sure kid: trash your benefactor when the cameras are on, and then later brazenly slap your benefactor on the back and hoot “Love ya, mean it.” That’ll work.
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. I’d be astounded if she’s been in a high street changing room since childhood.
Unlike Rowling. JKR made Watson rich very early, and Watson appears to have conveniently forgotten.
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? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who’s identified into the women’s prison? I wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma 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.
Rich people can swim in their own pools. Rich people can get luxury support rather than having to rely on state-run facilities. Rich people are unlikely to be locked up with violent criminals. The rich are different from you and me, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said.
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. 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. 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.
And here’s the thing: JKR wields a wickedly effective pen, and the callow movie star wields banal woke-speak.
Comments
4 responses to “A couple of points”
I’ve said it before; I would hate to be on the receiving end of Rowling’s righteous anger or scorn. I would hate more to be deserving of them. Watson has more than earned this. It will take more than a hand delivered note to restore the bridge she so publicly nuked. Any one of the following would ruin me emotionally if I’d provoked her to write them. Even the subtext, and unspoken parts that are only heavily implied are devastating:
I think you left out a bit in para 2?
And, of course, the slanted reporting. This was at the top of the news offered up for me this afternoon. This is from Variety:
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/jk-rowling-slams-emma-watson-ignorant-rift-letter-1236533904/?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
“Unlike Watson, with regard to my own legally held beliefs.”
I think that’s now correct.
It’s almost as if Watson has received a Howler of her very own. In the Potterverse, a Howler is
But what Rowling has “delivered” to Watson is so much worse, because it is calm, quiet, and reasoned, not loud, angry, and shrill. (But of course it isn’t; Rowling’s not a TRA.) It even has an undertone of sadness and regret set aside in favour of a robust, honest reconning. And it is visible beyond the immediate audience of a private note or rebuke of any kind, exploding or otherwise.