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Harry Potter actor Harry Melling, who played Dudley Dursley in the films, has voiced his support for the trans community amid author J.K. Rowling’s continued transphobic remarks.
When asked about the controversy surrounding She Who Should Honestly Just Stop Talking’s dangerous TERF rhetoric in a new interview with British newspaper The Independent, Melling responded: “I can only speak for myself, and what I feel, to me, is very simple, which is that transgender women are women and transgender men are men.”
“Every single person has the right to choose who they are and to identify themselves as what’s true to themselves,” the actor added. “I don’t want to join the debate of pointing fingers and saying, ‘That’s right, that’s wrong,’ because I don’t think I’m the correct spokesperson for that. But I do believe that everybody has the right to choose.”
Rowling has repeatedly come under fire for continuing to spread anti-trans bigotry online. In June 2020, she published a lengthy essay on her website that included inaccurate fearmongering about “forced” transition and the disproven “dangers” of trans-inclusive restroom policies. Last year, she published a novel in which an online content creator gets doxxed and murdered for creating a controversial cartoon, and criticized British trans charity Mermaids for “providing chest binders to underage girls without parental consent.” And just last month, she went out of her way to bash a trans writer who didn’t want to buy the new video game Hogwarts: Legacy.
Responses from Harry Potter alums to Rowling’s behavior have run the gamut, with several high-profile stars from the franchise voicing their support for her. In a November interview with The Times UK, Helena Bonham Carter, who played Bellatrix Lestrange in the franchise, called the controversy surrounding Rowling “a load of bollocks” and argued that the Potter creator “has been hounded.” Meanwhile, Voldemort himself, Ralph Fiennes, called the “abuse” Rowling receives for her transphobia “appalling” in an October interview with The New York Times, and back in September 2020, Robbie Coltrane (who played Hagrid) told Radio Times that Rowling’s critics are “a whole Twitter generation of people who hang around waiting to be offended.”
But like Melling, several other younger Potter cast members have publicly denounced Rowling’s anti-trans comments, including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Evanna Lynch, Bonnie Wright, Eddie Redmayne, Katie Leung, and others.
In a recent interview with IndieWire, Radcliffe elaborated on how he felt he “needed to say something” after Rowling’s transphobic remarks first surfaced.
“Since finishing Potter, I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge identification with Potter,” Radcliffe said, referencing the open letter he penned to fans in partnership with the Trevor Project back in 2020. “And so seeing them hurt on that day was like, I wanted them to know that not everybody in the franchise felt that way. And that was really important.”
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