Here is the bit where I would consider he is doubling down, not on his stance on transgenderism, but in disrespecting Jo.
.“It makes me really sad, ultimately,” he says, “because I do look at the person that I met, the times that we met, and the books that she wrote, and the world that she created, and all of that is to me so deeply empathic.”
He is so caught up inside himself that I don’t think it’s crossed his mind that Jo has seen something he has missed. He is implying she is no longer empathetic, failing entirely to understand that her current stance is empathetic to the group she considers are losing out, i.e. women. I think his mind is so tightly shut that he can’t even see there’s a conflict of rights.
But it’s obvious from the wider interview that his life is incredibly blinkered. I can’t really imagine what it does to your brain to grow up outside the real world the rest of us inhabit. He also conflates the current situation with the gay people who inhabited his world when he was a child. How many famous actors now have “transed” their children? I suspect he is in a famous actor bubble, where Jo is not.
But it’s incredibly sad if he can’t see that it isn’t Jo and her empathy that’s changed. It’s the political climate and the unreasonable demands that are being made. It would appear he doesn’t have the imagination or insight to consider whether there’s any possibility it might be him that’s wrong.