Television ‘Please walk away from Harry Potter’: why the stars of HBO’s new TV show are in for decades of social media hell

[Rockhopper1]

Stuart Heritage has scribbled a ridiculous and slightly threatening article for the Guardian today under the above headline Such wilful misrepresentation of JK Rowling’s views after all this time can surely only be fuelled by misogyny?

It must really irritate the activists that Harry Potter remains so popular. They obviously believe they have way more influence than they actually do.

Theres many of us that will support JK Rowling in any venture she goes ahead with. That support shows TRA's we can't be controlled and also we know she puts her money to damn good use.

She is the beacon of hope for this movement and an inspiration to everyone without a platform who can only make small changes and fight in small ways in our daily lives

No I hope she just ignores him. I think he’s looking for attention.

It's very weird how much hatred they have for JKR and great how few fucks are given about that outrage. All JKR ever did was state, correctly, that while all transwomen are free to dress and style themselves however they wish and use any name they wish and it's wonderful they have the freedom to do that, they will always and unchangeably be male in the circumstances where male and female are separated into 2 categories (and of course welcome to opt into any additional categories that are introduced that feel more comfortable if there are more than 2 categories, just not into the women's category) because sometimes sex is relevant and important. This is basically exactly what the supreme court confirmed is and always has been the law of the land so getting this exercised about it makes the TRAs look about as rational as flat-earthers.

I belong to a couple of Harry Potter fanfiction groups. They're international and female. They adore Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) who supports JKR and only wish they could see him on Broadway. They dearly love Jason Isaacs too, and think Radcliffe, Grint and Watson are ungrateful talentless losers.
Once in a while some woke poster will call JKR a transphobe and I'll always reply with her great charitable endeavors. The majority agree with me and the attacker gets 1 other supporter.
The fanbase loves her and HP.

Katherine Parkinson appears to have avoided getting embroiled in the Graham Linehan noise and as recently as this year has said positive things about working with him, so I'm sure whatever comes out of this new role won't cause her too much angst.

Dreadful article but much in line with Stuart Heritage’s usual ones, which are either banal or annoying - and sometimes both at the same time. He wrote a rather banal and annoying book about the Frankfurt School a few years ago and this has possibly led him (erroneously) to believe that he is a public intellectual.

Even if every actor cast so far, walked away, they would still be considered heretics by the TRA's, there would be no forgiveness.

Fuck em

I'm mid 30s and very much of the Harry Potter generation, grew up loving the books and I've loved reading them to my own children.

I was tremendously disappointed with the films, mostly because most of the child actors were frankly rubbish. Some of them got a bit better over the years. The adult actors were first class but it couldn't make up for the kids for me. But the plots were also very rushed to fit into the film and for some of them I found myself wondering how you'd even know what was going on if you hadn't already read the book.

The HP books are essentially mystery novels at heart (no wonder JKR has gond on to write such cracking murder mysteries for adults) and I think TV is going to be a much better format to build that sense of mystery with all the clues properly in their place.

Honestly I'm very much looking forward to this and I'll be watching with my children! It could always flop - depends how it's done - but the potential to improve on the films is huge imo.

@sadmillenial I gave up on Dr Who because the scripts got progressively worse after the Tennant period. It makes me feel sad as I loved the series as a child but ah well...
Juno Dawson is one of them crappy writers that are massively hyped for young people , no? I would avoid buying any of that shite anyway for my nieces and nephews . David Walliams is another one.

This isn’t going to go away any time soon. It’s more than a year until the Harry Potter series airs, which means it won’t finish for at least a decade. Lithgow has said it will probably be his final major role, since he will be pushing 90 by the time it wraps. Every time anything of note happens – any time there is a junket or a new actor is cast – the issue will be front and centre. The actors who oppose Rowling will be forced to do it over and over again. The same goes for the ones who agree with her. The ones who just want a quiet life will twist themselves into knots trying to say as little as possible in the face of direct questioning. There is no outrunning this.

To make matters worse, you already know if you are going to watch Harry Potter or not. Maybe you will watch it because you loved it as a child and can overlook Rowling’s views (or support them). Maybe you won’t because you don’t want to financially aid Rowling, or because the thought of sitting through a decade-long third retelling of a story you never liked much in the first place makes you feel depressed and exhausted. Either way, your mind has been made up. What we are left with is a show that is too big to ignore. It’s going to be a long decade.

This is weirdly obsessive.

It might well be a long decade (or a catastrophically short one) due to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the unravelling of the old world order and the alliances we've long taken for granted, the game-changing rise of AI and the fact that the threat of climate change is now a tangible reality. But Stuart Heritage expects to spend the next ten years focusing on a TV series he doesn't like and doesn't have to watch. Mind you, this is a bloke who wrote a whole book about his experience of growing bald.

I would like to send Stuart Heritage on a trip to somewhere completely out of his comfort zone, where he'd meet people he would never otherwise have met and undertake activities he'd never thought of doing, while perhaps learning a new skill or two. I don't think I have ever wished this for any other journalist.

That was Stuart Jeffries, not Heritage - so hard to tell these white middle class Guardian writers with similar names apart! But beyond that I agree with you. SH seems weirdly self loathing about his work but also assured of his own superiority.

I seem to recall that Stuart Heritage started out writing a humorous blog, and it was so funny (apparently) that the Guardian hired him to write for them. But I suspect that anything above and beyond writing funny blogposts is stretching his capabilities to their limit. This really is a nothing piece and as a PP said, it misses the central point, which is why should a bunch of keyboard warriors be allowed to bully en masse a bunch of actors just for doing their job?

The one hope I have out of all this is that the actors who believe themselves to support trans rights but are nonetheless being targeted so viciously by trans activists start to have second thoughts about what they're supporting.

Doh! You're quite right. They all blend into a confusing blob with similar characteristics.

They do have influence - just the wrong kind - all their anti Harry Potter articles makes more publicity and makes it trend more.

In the run up to Hogwarts Legacy there were many anti HP articles, but they backfired because most people when they heard about the game they wanted to play it. They did enjoyed it and word spread. Thus it became the biggest game of the year.

Every time there is a negative story about the TV series - just because it exists - not because it isn't very enjoyable because no-one knows yet, that increases interest. At the moment they are just doing casting and everyone is obsessed with it.

Really? I have seen people criticising Juno Dawson's writing, but I don't think people have said that Doctor Who should be boycotted. Do you have any links?

JK Rowling has been persona non grata with people who support Corbyn, Scottish Independence and Brexit, and her books have been burned by fundamental Christians. She has never been politically neutral.

But, apparently, her most offensive act is to be an outspoken feminist.

"A few years ago, announcing yourself as the star of a <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/N9OMl/www.theguardian.com/books/harrypotter" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harry Potter series would have simply told the world that you had decided to receive a lot of money over many years from a studio that had a dearth of new ideas. But, in 2025, a Harry Potter actor isn’t just taking a job on a TV show; they are making a political statement, whether they like it or not"

I think this actually means

"A few years ago some people disagreed with JK Rowling's views on politics, but they were the wrong people, so their views didn't matter. Now that she has expressed a view that is inconvenient and uncomfortable for me, (albeit views that have correctly predicted the findings of reports and legal decisions*), anyone linked to her work is a pariah by association"

*I doubt that Heritage has paid much attention to the reports and legal decisions.

That’s because they think that their tiny corner is the centre of the whole universe. They can’t comprehend that most people couldn’t give a rat’s arse.

HP books and games are hugely popular worldwide (30% jump in sales last year), that will continue for a long time.

The activists are patheticly outnumbered.

I think the differernce is some people seem to want to keep JKRs books while getting rid of her. So they like her writing.

The issue with JD are his books stink. In part because he is a bit weird about sexual stuff. It's not so much a boycott of stuff that is otherwise good as a lack of desire to watch shitty tv.

And it's about Dr Who doubling down on the kinds of scripts that have been massively losing viewers.

Totally agree!
If comments had been enabled (as if?) there never would have been a better cue to post 'U OK hun?'

Yup. That's why her views are never actually explained in puff pieces like this.

Most people who clutch their pearls over JKRs opinions have never actually read what she wrote about women and the Great Trans Deception. They have seen the scaremongering articles about it, but never read what she wrote on the subject.

Many people before you have had this feeling/hope about anything HP/JKR related, and they have all, without exception, been wrong. But who knows, you may well be the exception to the rule.

It's not really a 'hope' (other than there would naturally be satisfaction in being proved right, as there is with any conjecture). Its success or failure would have absolutely no impact on my life, and I don't pay for any TV streaming services so I won't see anything of it unless it eventually finds its way onto one of the Freeview channels. If I felt an urge to watch Harry Potter on the television, my husband has a DVD box set of all the films.