Say It Ain't So, John! John Lithgow's Depressingly Feeble Non-Excuse For Appearing in the J.K. Rowling-Powered New Harry Potter Series
When Maggie Smith died, I was annoyed that headlines almost invariably referenced her roles in Downton Abbey and the Harry Potter films. She’d accomplished so much more than that, but for American audiences in particular, those are the roles that she’s best known for.
Multiple generations of distinguished British theater, film, and television legends have found high-profile, richly compensated work filling out a universe created by one of the world’s most successful novelists.
For a long time, there was no downside to being part of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Rowling was a beloved feminist writer with an inspirational backstory who created a world that children and adults all over the world fell in love with.
It wasn’t until 2019 that Rowling’s world darkened. That’s when she began cultivating an unfortunate image as a TERF warrior, not just willing, but eager to use her money, power, prominence, and fame to antagonize trans women.
It started tentatively at first, with her “mistakenly” liking a tweet from a TERF, or Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist. It’s a bullshit term. There’s nothing radical or feminist about speaking out against a vulnerable community with arrogance and cruelty.
You have to be really fucking hateful for your bigotry to become nearly as well known as your status as a billionaire with a ubiquitous, multi-media global empire.
Rowling REALLY leaned into the whole bully thing. It wasn’t just an opinion she held but a core component of her life as a writer, celebrity, and exceedingly rich person.
It’s a goddamn shame, is what it was. So many people found meaning and community in something that is now hopelessly tainted by toxic transphobia.
J.K. Rowling ruined J.K. Rowling. She’s a hero who became a villain and leaves behind an awful legacy of transphobia along with all them books about wizards and shit.
Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint all spoke out in favor of trans rights and against Rowling’s words and ideas.
There was no downside to signing on for the Harry Potter series. That’s not true any longer. Rowling has only been a full-time bigot for five years now. That’s long enough for her reputation to change. She has embraced villainy. It’s unbecoming.
Rowling is now synonymous with transphobia. She uses her vast fortune to help fund transphobic organizations and initiatives.
Rowling has a bad reputation with people who care about trans people, but she continues to have a license to print money through her literary output. With the rightward shift of our country and world, she’s no longer radioactive but rather a respected and essential contributor to the new Harry Potter TV show.
We live in the time of the Great Uncancelling, where problematic figures who suffered for their sins are welcomed back with open arms.
I’ve been watching the casting announcement for the new Harry Potter show with frustration. Rowling has not tried to hide her transphobia. She’s proudly shouted them from mountaintops.
An actor or actress who signs on for the upcoming Harry Potter series knows exactly what they’re getting into.
Alas, when John Lithgow was cast as Albus Dumbledore, he proffessed surprise that his casting might prove controversial among stubbornly literal-minded fans apoplectic that an American actor would be cast as such an iconic English character.
Truth be told, nobody cares about that shit. It doesn’t fucking matter at this stage. What does matter is that Rowling has become an international icon of bigotry and intolerance.
Lithgow did not expect to be criticized for signing on to essentially spend the last decade or so of his life playing a famous character in an adaptation of one of the bestselling book series of all time in exchange for a vast sum of money and years upon years of steady, richly compensated work.
Lithgow has apparently lived alone in an underground cave for the past seven years. That’s the only possible explanation for his ignorance about Rowling's widely reviled hatemonger status.
In an interview with The Times, Lithgow showed his interviewer a link to an open letter pleading with him to step away from the role rather than support Rowling’s toxic and destructive transphobia.
When asked if the criticism Rowling has received for devoting her life and career to spreading hatred made him reluctant to play the role, he glibly replied, “Oh, heavens no.”
The seventy-nine-year-old man asked, “Why is this a factor at all?”
Lithgow was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his nuanced, sympathetic, and non-stereotypical portrayal of a trans woman in 1982’s The World According to Garp.
Yet in the conflict between a vulnerable minority group whose already difficult lives grow more difficult by the day thanks to people like Donald Trump and J.K. Rowling, Lithgow’s thoughts and concerns were not with trans kids or teens but rather with the world’s richest transphobe.
Lithgow pondered airily, “I wonder how JK Rowling has absorbed it. I suppose at a certain point I’ll meet her, and I’m curious to talk to her.”
The Blow Out star seems to see Rowling as the real victim. To answer Lithgow’s question, Rowling has absorbed the criticism by doubling down and leaning into the “hateful bigot” thing. She recently posted a social media message of herself smoking a cigar and drinking a cocktail in victory after a transphobic bill she supported and helped finance was passed, which stated that legally, trans women are not women.
Rowling was gloating because one of the world's wealthiest and most powerful women had used her wealth and power to hurt the powerless and hurting.
Lithgow seems to think that Rowling is a leftist, a feminist, and a creative genius who has some ideas about gender, sexuality, and the trans community that some find problematic.
He sees Rowling’s issues with the trans community as nothing more than a political and ideological disagreement.
When Lithgow finally has the incredible pleasure of meeting Rowling, one of the most hated figures in all of pop culture, it sounds like he’ll ask her some softball questions about why some folks seem to have a problem with her, and then accept whatever response she provides. He’s certainly not going to grill her.
His response has actually gotten worse since I wrote the first draft of this piece. He’s hinted at having different views on the trans community than Rowling, but also gushed of the criticism she’s received for being a hateful bigot willing to risk everything to hurt trans women, “I think she's handled it fairly gracefully."
She has not.
In a dizzying exercise in false equivalency, in The Times interview, Lithgow asked, “No one complained when I agreed to play (Roald) Dahl, but I’ve received so many messages about JK Rowling. Isn’t that odd?”
That doesn’t seem odd. Roald Dahl doesn’t benefit financially from Lithgow's portrayal of him onstage. Unlike Rowling, he’s dead. Profits from the play where Lithgow plays Dahl will not be used to fund antisemitic organizations, but money from the Harry Potter TV show will be used to finance Rowling’s fierce crusade against trans women.
Lithgow has much to gain personally and professionally by dismissing the uproar over Rowling’s anti-trans views. He can play a plum role until he retires or dies in a project that promises to be internationally popular.
If Lithgow were to listen to the voices of the powerless and oppressed and drop out of the series in protest of Rowling’s bigotry, all he’d have would be the warm feeling that comes with doing the right thing even if it costs you money or prestige.
Unfortunately, you cannot pay your rent with the warm feeling that comes with being on the right side of history, and comfort and ease seem more important to Lithgow now than standing with the powerless against the powerful.
You can pre-order The Fractured Mirror here: https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan didn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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