Albus Dumbledore may be missing from HBO Max’s upcoming Harry Potter TV reboot.
John Lithgow, who plays Hogwarts’ famous headmaster in the new series, reportedly considered leaving the show due to the backlash he received after the casting announcement over JK Rowling’s anti-trans comments.
In a new interview with The New York Times, Lithgow said that while she disagrees with Rowling’s views on transgender issues, she believes the Harry Potter books themselves are “clearly on the side of the angels against intolerance and bigotry.”
But the Times wrote that Lithgow, who was “stinged” by the harsh online reaction, “considered quitting the series, but decided not to.” That said, Lithgow admitted that the subject of Rowling will come up “in every interview I do for the rest of my life.”
In the recent film Jinpa, Lithgow plays the grandfather of a transgender teenager played by Orde Mason-Hyde. In an interview with Out magazine, Mason-Hyde described Lithgow as “a very resourceful and beautiful human being to work with”, but said she considered Lithgow’s decision to appear in Harry Potter to be “disconcerting”, adding: “There’s an element of this that I find vaguely hurtful”.
Lithgow is not the only newcomer to the wizarding world to distance himself from his controversial Creator beliefs. Papa Essiedu, who plays Severus Snape in the series, was one of hundreds of industry names to sign an open letter calling for industry action on transgender rights and demanding that institutions such as BAFTA, the BBC, the BFI and Channel 4 commit to protecting and including transgender people.
The letter comes just weeks after Britain’s highly controversial Supreme Court ruling barring trans women from being legally recognized as women, which Rowling praised on social media.
