Keira Knightley has addressed the backlash to her joining the Harry Potter franchise as author JK Rowling’s comments continue to create divide.
Last month, it was announced that the Bend It Like Beckham actress, 40, would be voicing Professor Umbridge in Audible’s seven-part audiobook adaptation of the wizarding franchise.
Other cast members include Hugh Laurie as the voice of Albus Dumbledore, while Matthew Macfadyen will play Lord Voldemort. There are over 200 actors taking part in total.
As for Rowling’s involvement, the 60-year-old is producing the new audiobook series with Audible via her Pottermore Publishing company.
Consequently, fans of the Love Actually actress expressed disappointment in her casting, given how Rowling has been at the centre of transphobia controversy for several years. Knightley has also played multiple LGBTQ+ roles throughout her career.
Now, the movie star, whose latest role is Netflix’s The Woman in Cabin 10, has been quizzed on her decision to join the Audible series, admitting she was ‘unaware’ that Potterheads have been boycotting the franchise in solidarity with the trans community.
‘I was not aware of that, no,’ Knightley said in a new interview with Decider.
She continued: ‘I’m very sorry.
‘I think we’re all living in a period of time right now where we’re all going to have to figure out how to live together, aren’t we?
‘And we’ve all got very different opinions. I hope that we can all find respect.’
The controversy over Rowling’s beliefs began in 2017 and 2018 when she liked anti-trans tweets.
Things escalated in 2020 when she shared an opinion piece discussing ‘people who menstruate’, a phrase she took issue with.
“‘People who menstruate.” I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’, she wrote.
‘If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth’, she tweeted further.
She added: ‘The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women – ie, to male violence – “hate” trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences – is a nonsense.
‘I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.’
Comments Rowling has made in the years since include her views about trans women having access to female spaces, such as public bathrooms. In 2023, Rowling said she would rather go to prison than use a trans person’s correct pronouns.
As a result, her remarks have generated strong responses from Harry Potter leads Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson, with Radcliffe penning an open letter in connection with LGBTQ+ charity The Trevor Project to declare that ‘transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I’.
As for Grint, the Ron Weasley actor said trans people are ‘a valuable group that I think needs standing up for’.
Watson also posted on social media: ‘Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are… I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you, and love you for who you are.’ She went on to encourage donations to the charity Mermaids.
This was only the beginning of Watson and Rowling’s rift, though, as their opposing beliefs made headlines again when Watson appeared on Jay Shetty’s podcast and said it was ‘never possible’ to discuss trans rights with her.
There, she told him of her love for Rowling, who kick-started her career as a child actor, while still disagreeing with her stance on trans protections.
‘I just don’t know what else to do other than hold these two seemingly incompatible things together at the same time and just hope maybe they will one day resolve or co-join themselves, and maybe accept that they never will, but that they can both still be true,’ she mused.
‘And I can love her, I can know she loved me, I can be grateful to her, I can know the things that she said [about me] are true, and there can be this whole other thing.
‘And my job feels like to just hold all of it. But the bigger thing is just, what she’s done will never be taken away from me.’
Rowling had a strong reaction to what Watson said, firstly mocking her with a video repost before penning an essay of several hundred words.
In it, she accused Watson of having ‘so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is’.
‘Her “public bathroom” is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door,’ she wrote. ‘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?
‘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.’
As for Harry Potter adaptations, as well as the audiobook series—the first book of which will be released on November 4—HBO is also bringing the films to the small screen in TV form.
Confirmed cast members so far include John Lithgow, Paapa Essiedu, Nick Frost, and Katherine Parkinson.
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