John Lithgow Considered Quitting Harry Potter TV Series Over JK Rowling Backlash
John Lithgow has claimed that he contemplated pulling out of the upcoming TV adaptation of Harry Potter after he began facing backlash over his involvement in the series.
Around a year ago, it was confirmed that Lithgow would play Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in an upcoming TV show based on JK Rowling’s popular children’s novels, with one season dedicated to each of the books.
Immediately after this was announced, he and his new co-stars began facing criticism for accepting a role in the project, on which Rowling also serves as an executive producer.
Rowling has become a divisive figure in the last few years due to her commentary about issues relating to transgender people.
This includes repeatedly and deliberately misgendering trans public figures, and donating tens of thousands of pounds to the campaign group which raised the initial legal challenge that led to the UK Supreme Court’s ruling last year that the legal definition of a woman should include only those who were assigned female at birth.
During a new interview with The New York Times, Lithgow reiterated that he and Rowling have differing views on the trans community, and accepted the offer to play Dumbledore as he believes the Harry Potter stories are “clearly on the side of the angels, against intolerance and bigotry”.
In light of the social media reaction to his casting, Lithgow told the US outlet that he considered quitting the series altogether, but decided to stay.
Earlier in the piece, he also said that he hoped his past work in queer-adjacent work like the films Garp, Jimpa and Love Is Strange should show his allyship to the LGBTQ+ community.
Shortly after his casting was announced last year, Lithgow admitted he was “absolutely not” expecting the backlash he received for accepting the role of Dumbledore.
“I wonder how JK Rowling has absorbed it,” he said at the time. “I suppose at a certain point I’ll meet her and I’m curious to talk to her.”
More recently, the two-time Oscar nominee said of the controversy: “I take the subject and the issue extremely seriously.
“JK Rowling has created this amazing canon for young people, young kids’ literature that has jumped into the consciousness of society. Young and old people love Harry Potter and the Harry Potter stories. It’s so much about acceptance. It’s about good versus evil. It’s about kindness versus cruelty. It’s deeply felt.”
He added that, because of this, he found Rowling expressing “such views” on transgender people both “ironic and somewhat inexplicable”.
In his New York Times interview, Lithgow expressed that he has still not met Rowling, but predicted that he would be asked about her in “every interview I will ever do for the rest of my life”.