Ah, to be Keira Knightley and live blissfully unaware of the noxious cauldron of transphobic hate that author J.K. Rowling has been stirring for the last decade. It’s been six years of Rowling making transphobia her entire brand by endangering and denigrating transgender people online and successfully advocating for legal restrictions against the marginalized group of people. As such, those who took her book’s message of acceptance and tolerance to heart have chosen not to spend their hard-earned money on Rowling’s many projects, including those related to Harry Potter. Yet, Knightley didn’t know about that when she signed on to voice Professor Umbridge in Audible’s Harry Potter: The Full-Cast Audio Editions audiobooks. It also sounds like it wouldn’t have made a difference. Speaking to Decider, Knightley pleaded ignorance of Rowling’s “ongoing campaign against trans people,” as the publication put it.
“I was not aware of that, no,” she said. “I’m very sorry. You know, I think we’re all living in a period of time right now where we’re all going to have to figure out how to live together, aren’t we? And we’ve all got very different opinions. I hope that we can all find respect.”
Her Woman In Cabin 10 director, Simon Stone, piggybacked off that sentiment by equivocating the victims of Rowling’s hate for the perpetrator. “I think that we have learned over time, unfortunately, that the unbearable voice in the room is something that we should try and shut down,” Stone said. “And actually, I think everyone needs to recognize that they’re the unbearable voice for someone else, as well. The live and let live thing of like, ‘Oh God, your voice is really loud, and I can’t stand you.’ That’s part of our lives.” (The billionaire’s voice is much louder than that of the small and vulnerable population of trans people, but go off.)
“We all have hatred, deep hatred for someone in the universe—someone in the class. Let’s reduce it to classroom politics. There is always the kid that we cannot stand. I think we’d all agree that where that kid for someone else, too,” he continued. “Unfortunately, all sides of the political spectrum are currently trying to shut that kid’s voice down, but they don’t realize the irony of the fact that they’re also that kid for someone else. If we can all have a moratorium on that, and just let chaos live for a little bit, we might find our way out.”
In the interest of letting “chaos live for a little bit,” earlier this year, Rowling’s influence and wealth helped push forward a U.K. Supreme Court judgment that ruled trans women should not be considered women, which, according to NBC, “wip[ed] out decades of civil rights advances for British transgender people.” Rowling responded by posting a picture of herself smoking a cigar and holding a cocktail with the caption, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
