Emma Watson has opened up about her relationship with J.K. Rowling for the first time in years.
Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, has long held opposing views to Rowling when it comes to transgender issues. But this week, on the Jay Shetty Podcast, she spoke about her relationship with the woman whose books made her famous.
In the episode, Shetty brings up that Watson has publicly supported trans people and said she disagrees with Rowling’s views on gender. Then, he asks the actor how it makes her feel that Rowling has said things about her that could be “extremely hurtful” in response.
“I really don’t believe that by having had that experience, and holding the love and support and views that I have, means that I can’t and don’t treasure Jo,” Watson says of Rowling. “I will never believe that one negates the other, and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish.”
She adds, “I just don’t think these things are either or. I think it’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me, and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with.”
“I really do believe in having conversations and that those are really important,” Watson continues. “I guess where I’ve landed is: It’s not so much what we say or what we believe, but very often how we say it that’s really important. And that’s really frustrating and not what you want to hear when you’re really angry and upset with someone.”
She adds, “I just see this world right now where we seem to be giving permission for this kind of, like, throwing out of people, or that people are disposable. I will always think that’s wrong. I just believe that no one is disposable and everyone, as far as possible, whatever the conversation is, should and can be treated with, at the very least, dignity and respect.”
Watson says the thing she’s “most upset about” is that a “conversation was never made possible” but that she will always be open to starting a dialogue with Rowling.
Without naming it, the actor then says she is reluctant to talk about Rowling or “the issue” not because she doesn’t care, but because she doesn’t “want to say anything that continues to weaponize a really toxic debate and conversation.”
Watson also says she owes Rowling a great deal from their time working together and appreciates having had the opportunity to play a character like Hermione.
“There’s just no world in which I could ever cancel her out, or cancel that out, for anything,” she says. “I don’t know what else to do other than hold these two seemingly incompatible things together at the same time and just hope maybe they will one day resolve, or like, cojoin themselves — and maybe accept that they never will, but that they can both still be true. I can love her, I can know she loved me. I can be grateful to her. I can know the things she said are true, and there can be this whole other thing. And my job feels like to just hold all of it.”
When Rowling’s tweets started becoming more transphobic in 2020, Watson wrote on X (called Twitter at the time) that she supported trans people.
“Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are,” she wrote. “I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.”
Since then, Rowling has publicly criticized Watson several times.
In 2024, Rowling wrote on X that Watson and costar Daniel Radcliffe shouldn’t feel “safe in the knowledge” that she will forgive them.
“Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces,” the author also wrote.
Rowling criticized the actors again in 2025. In March, she shared an X post asking, “What actor/actress instantly ruins a movie for you?”
“Three guesses,” Rowling wrote as her response. “Sorry, but that was irresistible.”
Watch the entire episode of the Jay Shetty Podcast featuring Watson below.
– YouTube
This article originally appeared on Out: Emma Watson breaks silence on J.K. Rowling: ‘No one is disposable’
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