Miriam Margolyes, who played Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter movies, is a woman completely unafraid to speak her mind. And recently she’s directed criticism towards adults who continue to watch the Harry Potter movies and read the books.
“I worry about Harry Potter fans because they should be over that by now,” she said in an interview with New Zealand outlet 1News in February. “It was 25 years ago, and it’s for children. I think it’s for children.”
“They get stuck in it,” she went on, adding a touch of her trademark dirty humor. “I do Cameos, and people say, ‘We’re having a Harry Potter-themed wedding,’ and I think, ‘Gosh, what’s their first night of fun going to be?’ I can’t even think about it. No.”
Needless to say, adult Harry Potter fans reacted to this pretty poorly, with some people on Twitter calling her “ungrateful.” (As if she wasn’t already a successful actress before the Potter franchise came along.) So Margolyes doubled down on her stance, telling ABC News Australia, “I just think that it’s for children. If your balls have dropped, then it’s time to forget about it!”
She called the movies a “great series,” that she was proud to be in, but went on, “It was 25 years ago. You know, grow up!”
Another actress criticizes Margolyes
Now another Potter alum, Jessie Cave, has spoken out disagreeing with Margolyes’ statements.
The actress, who played Hogwarts student Lavender Brown, said at Dream It Con last weekend, “It’s such a shame that that happened. So Miriam Margolyes, you know how she is—she’s just a bit funny. And I think she didn’t mean for it to be taken like that, I hope.”
But she added, “I really don’t like that she said that.” Clearly, Margolyes’ remarks touched a nerve somewhere in her. And then she went on, “It’s such an amazing thing, what Harry Potter has done. It’s created a community, it’s created a fanbase that has aged and is still bonded through this thing. And it’s passed on to younger people and younger generations and that’s what’s so amazing. And she probably just doesn’t understand that.”
What Cave didn’t mention, though, is all the people who have been deliberately excluded from that community.
The transphobia-shaped elephant in the room
Harry Potter is now impossible to separate from the transphobia of its creator, J.K. Rowling. Her “gender critical” (a.k.a. transphobic) views have grown more and more absurd and dangerous over the years, and recently the whole internet witnessed her denying the history of Nazi crimes against trans people.
It’s hard to pin down what exactly Margolyes’ views on Rowling are. In a 2020 interview with The Times, she called Rowling out for her “rather conservative view of transgender people,” and said, “If you seriously want to become a woman you should be allowed to. You can’t be a fascist about it.” That’s an extremely clunky conception of what it means to be transgender but it seems her heart was in the right place.
But two years later, in 2022, she seemed to walk back those comments and rescind her already tepid criticism of Rowling. “There is a spectrum and people can be anywhere along that. There isn’t one answer to all these trans questions,” she told the Radio Times. “I think the vituperation that J.K. Rowling has received is misplaced. I don’t know her at all. I admire her as a human being. She’s a generous woman, she’s a brilliant writer.”
The implications of being an adult Harry Potter fan
The problem with being an adult Potter fan isn’t that it’s “for children,” it’s that the money spent on Harry Potter products will go back to Rowling and her transphobic projects. Adults can choose where to spend their money and they shouldn’t be surprised if eyebrows are raised at their financial support of Rowling. And they should also be prepared to have their trans friends feel hurt and possibly unsafe around them if they continue to do so.
Most people won’t judge you for enjoying a piece of pop culture from your childhood, but they will judge you if you place your enjoyment above the safety of trans people.
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
