J.K. Rowling and Emma Watson's beef, explained

J.K. Rowling is not accepting Emma Watson’s olive branch. The Harry Potter author recently made it clear she is still at odds with one of the stars of the film franchise following comments the actress made about the status of their friendship.

Last week, Watson, who portrayed teenage witch Hermione Granger in the wildly successful Harry Potter film franchise, appeared on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast to discuss her decision to step away from Hollywood. The conversation turned to Rowling, who has come under fire in recent years for her comments about trans people. In 2020, following the controversy surrounding Rowling’s beliefs, Watson posted on X that she stands with the trans community, and in 2024, Rowling shared on X that she would never “forgive” the actress, nor trans-supporting Harry Potter costar Daniel Radcliffe, for aligning with a movement she believes is “eroding women's hard-won rights.” One year later, Rowling mocked Watson on X by hinting that she, Radcliffe and their costar Rupert Grint “ruined” the Harry Potter series with their views.

When asked last about her feelings toward Rowling now, Watson told Shetty that even though she and Rowling hold different views, she can still “treasure” the author and “the person that I had personal experiences with,” Watson said.

“I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish,” Watson said on the podcast, saying it is her “deepest wish” that “people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.”

She told Shetty she is open to having a dialogue with Rowling, saying it’s something she believes in “completely.”

Now, Rowling has responded to Watson’s comments on Shetty’s podcast. First, the author reposted a parody video to X, which mocked Watson’s interview, and wrote that she’s “here for ALL the spoofs.”

Rowling followed up the repost with a lengthy comment on X on Monday, writing that Watson and Radcliffe have “every right to embrace gender identity ideology” as their views are “legally protected” and that she “wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.” However, she took issue with the notion that Watson and Radcliffe had felt an “obligation” to respond to Rowling’s own views in public, as they “assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.”

Rowling also referenced a comment Watson made at the 2022 BAFTAs, in which she stated she was “here for all of the witches,” something Rowling suggests was a reference to trans women. After the award show, Rowling says, Watson wrote a note to the author, saying she was "sorry" for the backlash Rowling was experiencing at the time.

“This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety,” Rowling wrote. “Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.”

Rowling then criticized Watson and called her “ignorant,” writing that the successful actress will likely never find herself in need of same-sex public spaces like homeless shelters or hospital wards. Rowling, meanwhile, said she “lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous.”

“The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me — a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was — I might never have been this honest,” Rowling continued. “Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother.”

She concluded, “Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public — but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.”

What have other Harry Potter stars said about J.K. Rowling?

Rowling has faced intense criticism from the public, but few Harry Potter stars have spoken out against her directly, instead choosing to express support for the trans community, which Rowling has heavily criticized for encroaching on the rights of people who are born female.

In June 2020, following the onslaught of transphobia accusations against Rowling, Radcliffe penned a letter published on the website for LGBTQ organization the Trevor Project, in which he stated that trans women are women. “To all the people who now feel that their experience of the books has been tarnished or diminished, I am deeply sorry for the pain these comments have caused you,” wrote Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter in the films. “I really hope that you don’t entirely lose what was valuable in these stories to you.”

In a 2024 interview with the Atlantic, Radcliffe called Rowling’s comments about the trans community “really sad,” as “the books that she wrote and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic.”

In 2020, Grint — who portrayed Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films — gave a statement to the U.K.’s the Sunday Times, saying, “I firmly stand with the trans community and echo the sentiments expressed by many of my peers. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. We should all be entitled to live with love and without judgment.” In a 2021 Esquire interview, Grint said it was important that he was clear in his support of the “valuable” trans community.

“I am hugely grateful [for] everything that she's done. I think that she's extremely talented, and I mean, clearly, her works are genius," he said of Rowling. "But yeah, I think also you can have huge respect for someone and still disagree with things like that.”

Tom Felton, who is currently reprising his role as Draco Malfoy onstage in the Broadway production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, addressed the controversy surrounding Rowling in an interview with Variety on the red carpet at the Tony Awards this past June. When asked whether Rowling’s comments impacted his work, he answered that they do not, as he’s not “attuned” to the current situation. “The only thing I always remind myself is that I've been lucky enough to travel the world. Here I am in New York,” he continued. “And I have not seen anything bring the world together more than Potter, and she's responsible for that. So I'm incredibly grateful.”