Literally putting words in JKR's mouth.

Hasn't "Natalie" Contrapoints Wynn cornered the market in this type of boring, self-invested cosplay shite?

Anna should have interviewed Robert Galbraith instead. That would be real fiction.

Basically yes.

I mean if you're going to imagine yourself in a parallel universe where the Harry Potter books were actually written by one of the child actors who starred in the film adaptations, at least go for the one with a degree in English literature from Brown University. That would make it marginally less silly. And less sexist than pretending that the books written by the most successful female author in history were actually written by a man.

Daniel Radcliffe who quit his formal education after AS level because he was going to focus on his very underwhelming acting career? That Daniel Radcliffe?

Does anyone remember the absolute melts on Twitter who were saying, 'let's pretend that Daniel Radcliffe wrote the Harry Potter books!'?

So basically this is "wah wah wah, we can't get the real JK Rowling to change her [completely sensible and reasonable] words no matter how much our supporters cry and stamp their feet and wave placards and send her death threats, so we're going to pretend she meant what she would have needed to have said to justify in our eyes the absolute shit-load of unrelenting abuse TRAs have unleashed upon her."

I've actually seen a preview of this. It goes:
TRA: what's your name?
Pretend JKR: JK Rowling
TRA: what colour is the sky?
Pretend JKR: Blue
TRA: what's the opposite of on?
Pretend JKR: off
TRA: JKR blew off!! She said it!! Ewwww blow-offs!

Fin.

Oh that would be perfect, especially if it were preceded by her actual words. The gulf between them would be staggering.

I think as a response to this “play”, a play should be put on, comprised entirely of quotes JKR has received from TRAs. One after the other, all evidenced, all vile - wouldn’t that be an interesting contrast? ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

It's not illegal to put a fictional version of a real person on stage, and the law can't discriminate based on whether that portrayal matches our own politics or not.

i'm not being funny or nuthin', but you'd think, wouldn't you, that if they were going to do this without fear of repercussion, they wouldn't pick on one of the most successful writers of all time. 🙄

One, incidentally, who wouldn't have to invent a single thing if she put on a similar play in response. And could attribute every last word she wrote to a specific person, date and time.

They never, ever learn. It's practically pathological.

Actually using the script of this and recreating it then freeze-frame critiques with famous characters coming in and out and discussing why they think that is wrong/right/a load of tosh from either side. That could be interesting from all sorts of angles. Call my agent to discuss 🤣.

Absolutely, I get the point you were making and sorry for not making that clear.

But the idea of the staged debate wasn't even like this in the sense that it wouldn't have involved playing real people and attributing fake opinions to them. So already it was worlds apart from this and even then people were worried about it being offensive. Some people may have found it offensive but it wouldn't have been defamatory, which it sounds like this will be

A couple of people have quoted my post. My aim was to draw a comparison between the care that our forum users take to not be offensive, and the complete lack elsewhere. It seems I didn’t signpost this well enough, so thanks to the posters who clarified the careful intentions of mumsnetters.

I think part of the reason why JKR gets so much hate is because she's a big, big problem for trans activists.

She's someone who has always been on the right side of history. She's clearly not a bigot, no matter how badly they want to recast her as one. And most people, even the ones who don't like her books, think she is a decent person and that she is right about this.

That's why they're combing through books she wrote 30 years ago trying to find evidence of antisemitism and all sorts to "prove" that she was Voldemort in Dumbledore's clothing all along.

Yes there are countless examples. Go back to Shakespeare. But this is different in that it’s an interview format that is deliberately and knowingly to everyone advertising that it is altering words and lying.

In Dear England I have to say there was a lot of chuntering in the audience when they disagreed with the accuracy of the tiniest football detail and the production had had fact checkers in the production process too. The same playwright also did the Best of Enemies, which I haven’t seen, which was a fictionalised debate format between two famous politicians but had various famous people as side characters. Which sounds like a much better and entertaining format than a 2 hander interview hit job.
I’d eat my theatre programme if this play had even a tenth of the mastery of a James Graham play.

Oh dear lord no! That would be 'unsafe'!!!

Apparently being on the right side of history gives you the right to straight up make things up now, also seen recently with Popbitch and Pink News fabricating stories about the supposed failure of Graham Linehan's book sales.

It's not a play.

The "character" concerned is a living person who regularly expresses her real views on this subject.

Her real views are frequently twisted by the mainstream media anyway. She will say something about women's rights and it will be reported as her "controversial views on transgender rights".

But given how open she is about what she really thinks, there's no need to use artistic licence to fill in the gaps. There are no gaps.

So are they going to have the actress playing JKR just sit there and read out her own tweets and other writing on this subject? And charge people money for that?

Or are they going to make shit up?

It's a play. There are lots and lots of plays that feature real people as characters, with dialogue scripted by the writer, many of them not based on real life events and many of them controversial or portraying them in a bad light. King Charles III (written long before he was king) was an extremely popular West End play that reimagined the future of the royals and wasn't based on fact. Dear England (featuring a fictional version of Gareth Southgate) is the biggest hit play around. And of course there have been lots of TV shows, like the Crown and the Windsors, that use the royals as fictional versions of real people. The same person who wrote Dear England also wrote the Brexit movie which fictionalised Boris Johnson and others.

It's not illegal to put a fictional version of a real person on stage, and the law can't discriminate based on whether that portrayal matches our own politics or not. Either it's legal to represent real people on stage or it's not. If it's not, that means no one can ever write a play or movie or TV show about any political or historical figure, or about royalty. Or any movie based on real life events. You can't say "King Charles III is fine but not this play, because that play matched my opinions and this one doesn't."

If you want a blanket law banning all TV shows, movies, and stage plays about real people then fine, but you can't go "well the Crown is fine, or that movie about Margaret Thatcher was fine, but not this."

Actually, you've just described how I've "gotten where I've gotten" quite well.

Trans activists: JKR is a terrible transphobic bigot who wants to kill trans people!
Me: Are you sure? That doesn't sound very likely. I'd better go and find out what she has said.

Several hours later...

Me: OK so she clearly doesn't want to kill trans people. And...er...she's not wrong, is she?

Months later...

Me: WTF, why is there a male weightlifter competing in a women's category at the Olympics?

A year later...

Me: What the actual fucking fuck, female rape survivors who need single sex support aren't bigots!

A year later...

Me: Stop the world, I want to get off.

JKR essentially introduced me to the idea that not all of this rainbow stuff was as nice as it claimed to be.

She already did quite a lot of that when she wrote The Ink Black Heart.

The purpose of that thread would have been to really try and put ourselves into the perspective of the other person and argue their case as genuinely and compellingly as possible. Because the other side are generally unwilling to debate their positions. And it would have been generic "characters" coming at the debate from a particular perspective, not actual identifiable individuals.

It doesn't sound like that is what is happening here. Not least because JKR is more than willing to explain her own position, she doesn't need anyone to "play" her.

@Pudmyboy - dodgy, absolutely, but that’s not illegal/actionable either.

Hopefully there is something that can be pursued; but it’s highly likely (especially in current sociology-political context in Australia) that this has already slithered through legal checks as artistic expression/freedom of speech. I’d be very surprised if materials put out by the show don’t have disclaimers (in very small print) stating that it’s all the work of the author & while inspired by Rowling’s published statements the author does not claim Rowling thinks/believes any of the things the show says she does.