Actress Bel Powley, who stars in HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter streaming series, is now on the attack against Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling over the Rowlings views about transgenderism, and says she “strongly disagrees” with Rowling’s statements.
Rowling has consistently said that she does not care at all if an adult man wants to pretend he is a woman, but she opposes letting such a delusional person into women only spaces, like bathrooms, and also does not agree with allowing such men into women’s sports. But her comments have made her a target of the radical transgender lobby, and as a result she has been repeatedly disavowed by many of the actors associated with the movies and TV shows associated with the Harry Potter world she created.
The latest screed comes from Powley, who was cast to portray Harry Potter’s mean, Muggle aunt Petunia Dursley. The 34-year-old Powley took aim at Rowling in an interview with the UK Telegraph.
“I strongly disagree with J.K. Rowling’s views on gender. I think that the trans community deserve safety and dignity and respect and total acceptance,” Powley told the paper.
She then added, “But I love ‘Harry Potter.’ I grew up with the books. I am from that first generation of readers and, again, I love magic and spookiness.”
Rowling has had to deal with the ramblings of Potter actors for years. In 2025 she cut “Hermione Granger” portrayer Emma Watson down to size after Watson delivered a snide swipe at Rowling. If it weren’t for Rowling, it’s likely no one in the world would have ever heard of Emma Watson, but Watson attacked the very person who made her a world famous multi-millionaire. And Rowling would have none of it.
“Like other people who’ve never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is,” Rowling wrote in response to Watson’s swipe. “Has [Emma] had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who’s identified into the women’s prison?”
Unlike Emma Watson, Rowling explains, “I wasn’t a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women’s rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.”
“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 closed, saying, “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.”
Powley’s co-star in the new HBO series has also attacked Rowling, and said he even considered not taking the part in the series because of his distain for Rowling. John Lithgow, who was cast as the noble and wise Albus Dumbledore, called Rowling’s stance on transgenders “inexplicable.”
“The reasons to do it were much, much stronger than the reasons to protest against what Rowling has done and said,” Lithgow told The New Yorker Radio Hour, according to Variety. “I do disagree with much of it, much of it I think has been twisted and misrepresented, and she has doubled down on it at her own cost.”
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