Immediately after Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling published a 3,600 word essay defending her transphobia in June 2020, the franchise's stars Daniel Ratcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint all spoke out against her.
“I firmly stand with the trans community and echo the sentiments expressed by many of my peers," Grint said via a statement issued to The Sunday Times. "Trans women are women. Trans men are men. We should all be entitled to live with love and without judgment.” In a recent interview for Esquire, Grint explained why it was important for him to condemn Rowling's statements, despite still having "huge respect" for her work.
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“I am hugely grateful [for] everything that she's done," he said. "I think that she's extremely talented, and I mean, clearly, her works are genius. But yeah, I think also you can have huge respect for someone and still disagree with things like that.”
However, according to the actor, not speaking out was never an option. “I think to stay silent would have spoke,” he said. “Sometimes silence is even louder. I felt like I had to because I think it was important to. I mean, I don't want to talk about all that… Generally, I'm not an authority on the subject," he collects himself again. "Just out of kindness, and just respecting people. I think it's a valuable group that I think needs standing up for.”
Rowling has made her transphobia known since 2019, but the essay a year later, coupled with a slew of anti-trans tweets in which she implied that menstruation defines womanhood and conflated sex with gender, was the catalyst that caused her to lose face in the Potterhead community. Soon after, Rowling was met with widespread criticism and backlash from former fans, as well as several stars of the Harry Potter franchise. Others however, have supported her — some sharing her transphobic views (RIP Hagrid), and others who don't agree with her, but are specifically against the wave of backlash levelled against her. The most recent addition to the latter camp is Voldemort actor Ralph Fiennes, who called the "hatred" from people whose views "differ" from her "disturbing."