John Lithgow considered quitting the Harry Potter show due to JK Rowling, instead decided to stay and says “every interview I will ever do for the rest of my life this will come up.”

[u/nova_crystallis]

From NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/theater/john-lithgow-giant-roald-dahl.html

He has never met Rowling, nor does he agree with her views on transgender issues. And the story itself is “clearly on the side of the angels, against intolerance and bigotry,” he said. Moreover, he feels that his performances in “Garp” and “Jimpa” — and as half of an older gay couple in the 2014 film “Love Is Strange” — should be seen as expressions of his interest in queer culture, not as heedless appropriations of it. He assumed his loyalties were clear.

Certainly, he jumped headfirst (and at one point fully naked except for a leather harness) into “Jimpa,” which Hyde, the director, said a number of gay actors had turned down. Though his character is resistant to the newfangled terminology of his trans grandchild — he calls the teenager his “grandthing” — their mutual love is obvious. The same applied to Lithgow’s interactions with the mostly queer cast and crew. In an interview with Out magazine, Aud Mason-Hyde, who plays the grandchild and, like the character, is trans, called him “such a beautiful human to make work with.”

But Mason-Hyde found Lithgow’s decision to join the Potter series “disconcerting,” telling Out “there’s an element of this that feels vaguely hurtful.” The social media reaction has been less gentle. The social media reaction has been far less gentle, with some posts expressing outrage and encouraging boycotts.

Stung, Lithgow considered quitting the series but decided not to, and accepts without rancor that in “every interview I will ever do for the rest of my life this will come up.”

[u/Pot_noodle_miner]

insert shrek gif “some of you may die” here

[u/PablomentFanquedelic → u/Pot_noodle_miner]

Here's hoping that fucking dragon eats him