JK Rowling’s trans views have not had ‘any impact’ on Harry Potter TV series casting, HBO says

The contentious views of Harry Potter author JK Rowling have not affected the casting process for the new TV adaption of the stories, according to HBO chief executive Casey Bloys.

Rowling, who is an executive producer of the series about the young wizard, has courted controversy in recent years for her views on the trans community and, in particular, gender-affirming care, single-sex spaces and women’s sport.

She has also engaged in online rows on the issues with the likes of broadcasters India Willoughby and Kirstie Allsopp and actor JJ Welles.

News of the TV series, which will not feature the three main stars of the original films, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, first broke last year, and each season is expected to be based separately on the seven books and have budgets similar to other HBO shows such as Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.

“She’s been fairly involved, she was very involved in the process of selecting the writer and the director,” Bloys told journalists at HBO’s 2025 preview presentation in West Hollywood, Los Angeles.

“I imagine she’ll have opinions on casting. It hasn’t affected the casting or hiring of writers or production staff or anything, so we haven’t felt any impact from that.”

Bloys, who previously dismissed JK Rowling’s views as a “a very online conversation”, added that the show might premier in 2027 but insisted fans of the Wizarding World should not “hold me to any of that because we’re just getting started with the writing and casting process”.

He went on to say that the age of the child cast is something executives were considering carefully.

“One of the ideas we talked about was shooting the first season and the second season very close to each other, time-wise, because from 11 to 13 is a big jump in kids’ lives.

“You can get away with 13 to 15, something like that. So, we are going to have to think about scheduling and shooting so that they don’t grow too much between seasons. It is a consideration.”

The first film arrived in 2001 and was shot when Radcliffe was 11, Grint 12 and Watson was 10 – closely matching the ages of their first-year-pupil characters. Filming concluded in late 2010 for the final instalment, when the trio were somewhat older than Harry, Ron and Hermione during the epic Battle of Hogwarts.