Brian Cox offers his support to JK Rowling amid the ongoing debate over the Harry Potter previous comments by the author that have been criticized as transphobic.
Cox, who plays patriarch Logan Roy on HBOs Successionrecently popped up on the BBC talk show Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg. During the interview, the Scottish actor described himself as “very proud” that the country’s parliament voted last month to pass legislation allowing transgender people to change their legal gender without the need for a medical diagnosis. (The British government said on Monday it would block the new law.)
After calling the law “long needed”, Cox was asked what he thought of the discourse surrounding Rowling, who publicly supported opposition to the Scottish legislation.
“I actually don’t like the way she’s been treated,” Cox said. ‘I think she’s entitled to her opinion; she has the right to say what she feels. As a woman, she has every right to say what she feels about her own body, and no one can say it better as a woman.”
He continued, “So I feel like people have honestly been a little high and mighty about their own attitudes towards JK Rowling.”
This is not the first time the actor has shared such a feeling. During a May interview with Piers Morgan, Cox referred to the opposition to Rowling as “deeply unjust”.
Rowling’s stance was met with mixed reactions from Hollywood notables. While Harry Potter Stars from the franchise including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint have publicly condemned her comments, Helena Bonham Carter, who played Bellatrix Lestrange in the films, called the backlash against Rowling “appalling”, while Lord Voldemort actor Ralph Fiennes previously said of the author that he can “understand where she comes from.”
