J.K. Rowling Says No Interest In Cutting Paapa Essiedu From HBO ‘Harry Potter’ Series Over Disagreement On UK Transgender Court Ruling
While many thought that actor Paapa Essiedu’s public disagreement with the UK Supreme Court’s ruling that individuals must legally be classified as either a man or a woman would lead to him being booted from his upcoming role as Severus Snape in HBO’s Harry Potter TV reboot, J.K. Rowling herself has confirmed that she both no power to or interest in cutting him over their ideological differences.
The ruling in question was prompted by the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v. The Scottish Ministers, a 2024 legal challenge wherein the former, gender-critical womens activist group sought a review of the country’s previous decision to recognize that the legal definition of “‘woman’ includes a person who has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if, and only if, the person is living as a woman and is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of becoming female.”
According to For Women Scotland, their request stemmed from concerns “that male non GRC-holders [i.e. a Gender Recognition Certificate, as issued by the government to those who choose to identify as anything other than their biological sex] can equally access women’s spaces”.
Fast forward to April 17th, and after months of legal back-and-forth, the UK Supreme Court officially ruled that “the definition of sex in the [Equality Act 2010, which explicitly states that sex-related protections are to be afford “to a man or to a woman“] makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man.”
“Persons who share that protected characteristic for the purposes of the group-based rights and protections are persons of the same sex and provisions that refer to protection for women necessarily exclude men,” they explained of their ruling. “Although the word ‘biological’ does not appear in this definition, the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman. These are assumed to be self-explanatory and to require no further explanation. Men and women are on the face of the definition only differentiated
as a grouping by the biology they share with their group.”
“A certificated sex interpretation would cut across the definition of the protected characteristic of sex in an incoherent way,” the court further argued. “References to a ‘woman’ and ‘women’ as a group sharing the protected characteristic of sex would include all females of any age (irrespective of any other protected characteristic) and those trans women (biological
men) who have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment and a GRC (and who are therefore female as a matter of law). The same references would necessarily exclude men of any age, but they would also exclude some (biological) women living in the male gender with a GRC (trans men who are legally male).”
“The converse position would apply to references to ‘man’ and ‘men’ as a group sharing the same protected characteristic,” they added. “We can identify no good reason why the legislature should have intended that sex-based rights and protections under the EA 2010 should apply to these complex, heterogenous groupings, rather than to the distinct group of (biological) women and girls (or men and boys) with their shared biology leading to shared disadvantage and discrimination faced by them as a distinct group.”
In response to the court’s decision, a number of notable UK-based entertainment workers signed an open letter decrying how the move “undermines the lived reality and threatens the safety of trans, non-binary, and intersex people living in the UK.”
“The Equalities & Human Rights Commission’s interim update on the ruling states that trans women are not permitted access to women’s facilities and trans men are not permitted access to men’s facilities, while further suggesting that trans people may also be excluded from using facilities that correspond to their biological sex,” read the letter. “We believe this guidance exposes trans people to embarrassment and harassment, and excludes them from participation in public life.”
Signees of this letter included current Doctor Who lead Ncuti Gatwa, Marvel Cinematic Universe star Hayley Atwell, The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey, and of course, Essiedu.
Given that the topic of ‘trans access to gender-specific spaces’, and specifically the barring of non-transitioning trans women from those designated for biological women, has long been one of the core topics of Rowling’s gender-related activism for some time, many took Essideu’s signing of the open letter as the ‘beginning of the end’ of his time portraying her iconic anti-hero.
However, much to their surprise, the author has instead made it clear that there are no plans to give the actor the boot.
Taking to her personal Twitter account on May 5th, Rowling shared a screenshot of an article from the Scottish Daily Express regarding the claim made by an alleged insider to fellow UK news outlet The Daily Mail that the author “won’t care at all” about their disagreement and declared, “I don’t have the power to sack an actor from the series and I wouldn’t exercise it if I did.”
“I don’t believe in taking away people’s jobs or livelihoods because they hold legally protected beliefs that differ from mine,” she added.
At current, HBO’s Harry Potter reboot is currently in production ahead of a planned release sometime in 2026.
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