Emma Watson can’t ‘cancel out’ J.K. Rowling

British actress Emma Watson finally broke silence on her and her co-stars’ rift with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. 

On the Jay Shetty Podcast, Watson said that it is her deepest wish that people who don’t agree with her opinion will still love her, and she hopes that she can keep loving people who don’t share the same opinion as her. 

Over the years, Rowling peddled explicit fear of trans people, particularly trans women, insisting they’re an “inherently dangerous threat to cisgender women.”

Watson, together with other HP cast members, especially Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint, openly disagreed with Rowling and has spoken out in support of transgender rights. 

When asked about the issue this time, Watson said she no longer wanted to “say anything that continues to weaponize a really toxic debate and conversation. Which is maybe why I don’t comment, or don’t continue to comment. Not because I don’t care about her, or about the issue, but because the way the conversation is being had feels really painful to me.”

However, she said that it’s upsetting that a “conversation was never made possible” with Rowling over the issue.

Additionally, Watson acknowledges that she owes Rowling a lot from their time working together in the franchise and is grateful for the chance to portray Hermione Granger.

“There’s just no world in which I could ever cancel her out, or cancel that out, for anything,” she said. “I don’t know what else to do other than hold these two seemingly incompatible things together at the same time and just hope maybe they will one day resolve, or like, cojoin themselves — and maybe accept that they never will, but that they can both still be true. I can love her, I can know she loved me. I can be grateful to her. I can know the things she said are true, and there can be this whole other thing. And my job feels like just holding all of it.”

Watson has stepped back from acting since 2019’s Little Women. Her career shifted towards academia, beginning with a Master’s in creative writing at Oxford University in 2023. She has also reportedly begun a PhD program since then.

Harry Potter is being rebooted by HBO into a TV series. Production is underway.