JK Rowling’s magic circle of trust: Who backed author during bitter trans row and who dumped her – as Harry Potter creator says she won’t forgive Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson

Harry Potter author JK Rowling’s women’s rights crusade has lost her the support of many stars whose careers were launched by the boy wizard – but she can count on a close network of supporters to back her up.

The novelist, 58, who also writes crime novels under the male pen name Robert Galbraith, has assembled a squad of allies who fear additional legal rights for transgender people will infringe on the rights of women.

Her years-long campaign for what she labels ‘sex-based rights’ has seen former Potter stars distance themselves from the multimillionaire writer – and directly express explicit support for transgender rights.

The publication of the Cass Review, which concluded that gender services for children were not making decisions based on backed medical evidence, prompted her to say she was unlikely to forgive stars such as Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson for their views.

But she has also won support from other campaigners who claim that giving trans people additional rights will put women at risk – from academics to lawyers, some of whom have fought legal battles on their views.

Rowling was criticised in 2018 after she liked a tweet describing trans women as ‘men in dresses’. Her spokesperson at the time said the like was a ‘mistake’, calling it a ‘clumsy middle-aged moment’.

But the author has since embarked on a campaign seeking to protect what she describes as women’s rights, fuelled by her own experiences of domestic abuse.

That campaign has seen her oppose legislation in Scotland that sought to make it easier for trans people to change their legal gender, and she has provided financial support to those fighting court cases challenging the legal status of trans people.

Rowling later funded and opened Beira’s Place, a women’s refuge in Edinburgh that excludes trans women from its services under the Equality Act.

She has repeatedly deliberately misgendered trans women in posts on social media, including high-profile figures such as newsreader India Willoughby, as well as a number of convicted sex offenders including rapist Isla Bryson.

Rowling has denied accusations she is transphobic, and police said recent tweets in which she misgendered trans women did not fall foul of Scotland’s new hate crime laws, which outlaw ‘stirring up’ hate against transgender people.

In a lengthy 3,600-word statement on her website published in 2020, she said her stance on trans rights was drawn from her experiences of abuse and sexual assault.

She wrote: ‘When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman… then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.’

But her June 2020 comments drew ire from many of the actors whose careers were launched by starring in the Harry Potter film series as children – as well as those who have appeared in the spin-off series Fantastic Beasts.

Daniel Radcliffe, 34, who began playing boy wizard Potter at 12, wrote a blog for LGBTQ+ charity The Trevor Project following Rowling’s comments in which he explicitly said: ‘Transgender women are women.’

He added: ‘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 (Rowling) or I.’

Radcliffe also apologised to those who he said may feel as though their enjoyment of the Harry Potter series had been ‘tarnished or diminished’. 

Emma Watson, who played school chum Hermione Granger, said in a tweet liked 842,000 times: ‘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.’

The 33-year-old previously shared an image of herself in a t-shirt reading: ‘Trans rights are human rights.’ 

Rupert Grint, meanwhile, told The Times: ‘I stand firmly with the trans community and echo the sentiments expressed by many of my peers.’

Grint, best known for his role as Potter’s best friend Ron Weasley, later described Rowling as an ‘auntie’, writing in 2022: ‘I don’t necessarily agree with everything my auntie says, but she’s still my auntie. It’s a tricky one.’

An array of other Potter stars, from Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) and Chris Rankin (Percy Weasley) to Eddie Redmayne and Katie Leung (Cho Chang) have also spoken out against Rowling’s comments.

Wright said simply in a tweet following Rowling’s comments: ‘Transwomen are women. I see and love you.’ 

Leung started a thread on Twitter in 2020 that purported to offer her thoughts on Cho Chang’s character – before sharing links to a number of organisations supporting transgender people of colour.

Redmayne, who played protagonist Newt Scamander in spin-off series Fantastic Beasts, said: ‘I disagree with Jo’s comments. Trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary identities are valid.  

‘They simply want to live their lives peacefully and it’s time to let them do so.’

He played transgender artist Lili Elbe, believed to be one of the first people in history to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, in the film The Danish Girl. 

Responding to the reactions to her initial comments from some of those attached to her creative endeavours, Rowling said at the time it was ‘nonsense’ to suggest she ‘hated’ trans people. 

She added: ‘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.’

Rowling said last night on X that she was unlikely to forgive those who had spoken out in support of trans people after her 2020 comments.

Responding to a tweet that asked whether the likes of Radcliffe and Watson would apologise to the author, ‘safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them’, she said: ‘Not safe, I’m afraid.’

‘Celebs who cosied 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 traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces,’ the writer added.

But while Rowling has lost the support of many of those whose careers she indirectly helped to launch, she has retained allies among other Potter stars including Jason Isaacs and Ralph Fiennes.

In 2022, Isaacs told The Telegraph: ‘There’s a bunch of stuff about Jo… I don’t want to get drawn into the trans issues, talking about them, because it’s such an extraordinary minefield.

‘One of the things that people should know about her too – not as a counter-argument – is that she has poured an enormous amount of her fortune into making the world a much better place… through her charity Lumos.

‘And that is unequivocally good. Many of us Harry Potter actors have worked for it, and seen on the ground the work that they do.’

Fiennes, meanwhile, said in 2021 he could not understand the ‘level of hatred’ directed towards the author, adding that he found it ‘disturbing’.

He later told The New York Times: ‘(The) verbal abuse directed at (Rowling) is disgusting, it’s appalling. I mean, I can understand a viewpoint that might be angry at what she says about women.

‘But it’s not some obscene, uber-right-wing fascist. It’s just a woman saying: “I’m a woman and I feel like I’m a woman and I want to be able to say that I’m a woman”.’

The late Robbie Coltrane, who played the half-giant gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid in the Potter films, also defended Rowling before his death in October 2022.

He told the Radio Times in 2020 that the author’s critics ‘hang around waiting to be offended’, adding: ‘They wouldn’t have won the war, would they?’

Evanna Lynch, who played Luna Lovegood in the Potter films, initially said Rowling was on ‘the wrong side of this debate’, but later rowed back on some of her comments in February 2023.

She praised Rowling for amplifying the voices of those who choose to detransition after believing they were trans – but added to the Telegraph that she did not want to add to trans people’s ‘pain’. 

And Tom Felton, who played Harry Potter’s school nemesis Draco Malfoy, appeared to avoid picking a side in a 2020 interview with BBC Radio 4. 

He said: ‘I am quick to remind myself and others that Potter for some reason has brought more people together across the world and more generations than probably anything else has in the past 20 years and I’m quick to celebrate that.

‘It came from one person and that’s her so I’m very grateful.’

Outside of the realms of the boy wizard, Rowling has also assembled a squad of campaigners who say they advocate for ‘sex-based rights’. 

She assembled with many of them in Fulham, west London in 2022 for a self-confessed boozy lunch, with pictures shared by many of those present online.

Among those in Rowling’s sex-based rights squad are Julie Bindel, the self-described ‘radical feminist’ and researcher into violence against women, as well as several members of the campaign group Sex Matters and some MPs.

Bindel said this week the Cass Review gives ‘validation… to campaigners who have pleaded so long for sanity’ on transgender issues.

Helen Joyce, the gender-critical activist and author of non-fiction book Trans, is also among those counting themselves as an ally of the Harry Potter author.

Joyce, who described herself in a February statement as ‘countering the pernicious influence of gender-identity ideology’, tweeted Rowling last month to offer encouragement after the writer highlighted abusive comments she received.

Joyce said: ‘it’s not about what you say – it’s because you’re speaking at all. Keep going! xx.’ She has denied previous accusations of transphobia.

Among those also pictured wining and dining with Rowling were Professor Kathleen Stock – an academic who quit her position at the University of Sussex after students and a trade union called for her to leave.

Stock has advocated for many years against allowing trans women to access women’s spaces, and has maintained a position that men cannot become women by undergoing sex reassignment surgery. She denies she is transphobic.

Other allies include Allison Bailey, the lesbian barrister who founded LGB Alliance, a charity that has faced accusations of transphobia; it says it is not exclusionary, but that its ‘focus is simply on lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people’.

Bailey crowdfunded a £550,000 tribunal case after her law firm, Garden Court Chambers, announced an investigation into her social media use amid accusations of transphobia; she was awarded £22,000 in damages.  

GCC was found to have discriminated against her by tweeting it would investigate her tweets; but she lost her case against LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall, whom she claimed had unduly influenced the chambers in acting against her.

She no longer practises as a lawyer, quitting the bar in 2023.

Rowling also has political allies, including Labour MP for Canterbury Rosie Duffield – who speaks out on women’s issues regularly.

In January, Duffield was cleared of accusations of transphobia following an internal Labour Party investigation that was launched after she liked a tweet from one-time comedy writer Graham Linehan. 

The MP has ‘strenuously denied’ allegations she is transphobic and said the probe had ‘completely exonerated’ her of any such claims.

Elsewhere on the political spectrum, Rowling also counts SNP MP Joanna Cherry as an ally. Cherry is a lesbian and a top lawyer, taking silk as a then-Queen’s Counsel in 2009.

The Harry Potter author wished the Edinburgh South West representative a happy birthday on X last month, calling her a ‘brave and brilliant friend’.

Cherry responded: ‘Thank you! So proud to call you a friend for so many reasons but mainly for your courage & tenacity xxx.’ She has denied being opposed to the existence of trans people.

Rowling has also given her support to former tennis star Martina Navratilova, considered one of the greatest players of all time, who has campaigned against allowing trans people to compete in professional sports competitions.

In 2023, Navratilova responded to a tweet that suggested she had ‘above average testosterone levels for a woman’ during her career in the 1970s and 1980s, writing: ‘My ovaries beg to differ.’

Rowling responded: ‘I f****** love you,’ to which the tennis player replied: ‘This means a lot – thank you Queen :)’. 

Many of Rowling’s allies also regularly share one another’s tweets on Twitter, now known as X under the ownership of Elon Musk.

And aside from her famous friends, Rowling also boasts an army of pseudonymous supporters on X who hang on her every word. Some claim that to post under their real names would put them at risk.

One said earlier this year: ‘We’re all fighting the same fight. Shaming women who for very good reasons remain anonymous doesn’t help us.’