J.K. Rowling criticizes 'ignorant' Harry Potter actress Emma Watson over transgender views

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling slammed “ignorant” Emma Watson for her views on transgender rights after the Hermione Granger actor said in an interview that she still “loves” the writer.

“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,” Rowling wrote.

For years, Rowling has had a running feud with Watson and her co-star Danielle Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter. Both Watson and Radcliffe have been outspoken in their support for the transgender community. Rowling has long been critical of gender identity, and in 2020 she published an essay on her website detailing at length why she opposed transgender activism.

In response, Radcliffe wrote, “Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people.” Watson said, “Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned.” Ron Weasley actor Rupert Grint has said, “I firmly stand with the trans community…. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. We should all be entitled to live with love and without judgment.”

Watson was asked directly about it in a lengthy interview with Jay Shetty , a British author and podcaster, that was published last week. She said that she still treasures the relationship that she had with Rowling, despite their differing views.

“It’s my deepest wish that, I hope 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. And I think that’s a very, very important way for me that I need to be able to move through life,” Watson said.

She said that she doesn’t comment on the debate or Rowling “not because I don’t care about her or about the issue but because the way the conversation is being had feels really painful to me.”

In her comments, Watson praised Rowling’s “kindness” and “steadfastness” when she was a young woman and for Rowling’s book having given her the opportunity to play Granger.

“There’s just no world in which I could cancel her out or cancel that out for anything, it has to remain true, it is true,” Watson said. “I can love her, I can know she loved me, I can be grateful to her, I can know the things she said are true, and that can be this whole other thing. And my job feels like to just hold, to just hold all of it. But the bigger thing is just what she’s done can never be taken away from me.”

The comments, however, appear to have provoked Rowling’s latest attack.

“I’m not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created,” she wrote. “Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology.”

She also wrote that Watson’s warm comments towards her constitute “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.”

In her comments, she said she found it hard to shake “ a certain protectiveness” for people she had known since they were children, but that there was a “turning point” when Watson, after being introduced by actress Rebel Wilson at the 2022 Bafta Awards as a feminist who’s “a witch,” said “I’m here for all of the witches,” and then appeared to mouth “but one” or “bar one.” But the part Rowling said really hurt is that Watson had a note passed to her saying she was sorry for what she was going through. 

“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,” Rowling wrote.

The attack on Watson, which ran nearly 700 words, includes Rowling saying that she lived in poverty while writing the Harry Potter novels and asked if Watson is “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 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 wrote.

However this is not the first time Rowling has appeared to criticize the former child stars. In March 2025, she hinted that the presence of Radcliffe, Watson or Grint was enough to ruin any film and she said after the Cass Review of transgender health services in the United Kingdom was released that it was “not safe” to assume she would forgive people for speaking out against her views.

“Celebs who cozied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatized detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces,” she wrote on X in April 2024.

Radcliffe told The Atlantic magazine last year that he hasn’t had contact with Rowling throughout the controversy.

Rowling concluded her recent post by saying, “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.”

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