Miriam Margolyes defends Harry Potter stars over their vocal trans allyship

Miriam Margolyes has voiced her support for her younger Harry Potter co-stars after being told they shouldn’t speak out against author JK Rowling.

Stage and screen star Margolyes, who played Professor Pomona Sprout in the Potter films, said she didn’t believe co-stars should be excluded from sharing their solidarity with trans people simply because they starred in the film adaptations.

Following controversial comments made by Rowling, who wrote the books on which the films were based, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson – Harry, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger respectively – separately shared statements supporting transgender people.

After a user on social media wrote that they owed the author an apology, Rowling responded that the trio could “save their apologies”, despite there being no indication that they were planning to give her one.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Margolyes agreed with her co-stars’ right to share their views, saying it was unrealistic to expect them to stay silent.

“They’re grown up and they have opinions. So why can’t they give their opinions? That’s fair to me,” she said. “They shouldn’t be trammelled because they once were in a film that somebody wrote.”

Margolyes, who once described herself as a ‘dyke’ while appearing opposite Australian prime minister Julia Gillard on live TV, has previously shared messages of solidarity with the trans and non-binary community, while distancing herself from Rowling’s views.

In an interview with The Times in 2020, she said she believed Rowling had a “rather conservative view” of trans people.

“I can’t make it out,” she added. “It’s a matter of personal happiness for people and I think that’s what you should concentrate on. If you seriously want to become a woman, you should be allowed to.”

In her interview with The Telegraph, she questioned the nature of some so-called gender-critical viewpoints, asking why people are “so nasty” towards trans people.

“There are so few trans people. People should be allowed to get on and be who they are, or be who they want to be, without all this nastiness.”

Margolyes is no stranger to distancing herself from the Harry Potter series, having said fans should be “over that by now“, adding: “It was 25 years ago and it’s for children. I think it’s for children, but they get stuck in it.”

However, former co-star Jessie Cave branded the remarks “terrible” and “such a shame.”

Cave, who played Gryffindor student Lavender Brown, added: “You know how she is, she’s just a bit funny. She didn’t mean for it to be taken like that, I hope. [But] I really don’t like that she said that. It’s amazing what Harry Potter has done. It’s created a community, it’s created a fan base that has aged and is still bonded through this thing, and it’s passed on to young generations.”