‘I don’t walk around thinking about my legacy – what a pompous way to live’: JK Rowling says she’s ‘not uncomfortable with getting off my pedestal’ as she addresses trans row in ‘Witch Trials’ podcast
- Podcast looks at the life of JK Rowling and her beliefs on transgender rights
- ‘I never set out to upset anyone,’ she said on ‘The Witch Trials of JK Rowling’
JK Rowling said she was ‘not uncomfortable with getting off her pedestal’ as she discussed backlash she received after sharing her views on gender identity.
Speaking on ‘The Witch Trials of JK Rowling’, with the first two episodes released today, the author can be heard saying she ‘never set out to upset anyone’ as she discusses controversial remarks made about transgender rights.
Rowling has been criticised for her staunch views on gender identity but has strongly denied accusations of transphobia.
The podcast episode titled Chapter One: Plotted In Darkness opened with Rowling addressing the backlash she received after sharing her views on gender identity, saying: ‘I never set out to upset anyone. However, I was not uncomfortable with getting off my pedestal.
‘And what has interested me in the last 10 years and certainly in the last few years, particularly on social media ‘You’ve ruined your legacy, oh you could have been beloved forever but you chose to say this’ and I think you could not have misunderstood me more profoundly.
‘I do not walk around my house thinking about my legacy, what a pompous way to live your life walking around thinking about what my legacy will be. Whatever. I’ll be dead. I care about now. I care about the living.’
JK Rowling opened up about her abusive ex-husband during The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast
Rowling spoke about her first marriage to Megan Phelps-Roper (pictured), host of The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast
In June 2020, the author wrote an essay in which she expressed ‘deep concerns’ about the consequences of trans activism.
JK Rowling also revealed in the podcast that her abusive ex-husband hid the manuscript for the first Harry Potter novel in a bid to stop her from leaving him.
The author said Portuguese TV reporter Jorge Arantes kept the pages of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone like a ‘hostage’ and she feared he would burn them.
After discovering where the manuscript was, she secretly started photocopying a few pages each day to ensure her work would not be lost.
The Harry Potter author also opened up about having a ‘hugely traumatic’ miscarriage and the death of her mother.
The 57-year-old writer sat down with US writer Megan Phelps-Roper at her home in Edinburgh to discuss her life, including her views on the transgender community.
Rowling married Arantes in 1992 after meeting him in a bar in Portugal where she had moved to work as a teacher following her mother’s death.
The couple had a daughter Jessica, now 29, but she left in 1993 after Arantes dragged her out of their home and attacked her.
She said: ‘The marriage had turned very violent and very controlling. He was searching my handbag every time I came home and I didn’t have a key to my own front door.
‘It was a horrible state of tension to live in because I had to act as though I wasn’t going and I don’t think I’m a very good actor.
‘That’s a terrible way to live and yet the manuscript kept growing, I had continued to write.
‘He knew what that manuscript meant to me because at a point he took the manuscript and hid it. That was his hostage.
Rowling married Arantes in 1992 after meeting him in a bar in Portugal where she had moved to work as a teacher following her mother’s death
JK Rowling revealed her abusive ex-husband hid the manuscript for the first Harry Potter novel in a bid to stop her from leaving him. (File photo)
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling is a seven-part podcast in conversation with the author, hosted by American activist and journalist Megan Phelps-Roper
During the teaser clip released on social media, Rowling can be heard saying: ‘I never set out to upset anyone’
JK Rowling pictured with Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson at the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2001
Who is JK Rowling podcast host Megan Phelps-Roper?
Podcast host Megan Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, pastor of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church.
The church was made famous by a 2007 Louis Theroux fly-on-the wall documentary on the extremist group, dubbed ‘the most hated family in America’.
From Kansas, Ms Phelps-Roper left the notorious church in 2012, after 27 years of controversial preaching, which included picketing the funerals of American soldiers and publicly celebrating when strangers were diagnosed with cancer.
Appearing in BBC2’s Louis Theroux: Life on the Edge Megan spoke of the ‘pain’ she feels being ostracised from her family and how, after becoming a mother herself, it has become even more difficult to think of her own mum, Shirley Phelps-Roper.
Westboro Baptist Church has made international news many times for its strong views against homosexuality.
It was founded by the late Fred Phelps who, according to the church, had 13 children, 54 grandchildren.
Made up mostly by the Kansas-based Phelps family, the religious group blames most tragedies – from the death of American soldiers to the recent massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School – on what they call a ‘pro-gay’ agenda in America.
Theroux first encountered the group – known for its inflammatory homophobic hate speech – for his 2007 documentary The Most Hated Family In America, and again for a follow-up in 2011 in America’s Most Hated Family In Crisis.
The original documentary saw members holding placards with the words ‘God Hates Fags,’ ‘Fags Doom Nations’ and ‘Thank God for Dead Soldiers’, at the funerals of U.S. personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and publicly celebrating when a stranger contracts cancer.
In 2013, Megan announced that she and her sister Grace, now 26, had left the controversial Westboro Baptist Church.
Her Ted talk I Grew Up in the Westboro Church – Here’s Why I Left, in which she details the shift in her perspective that caused her to leave the church, has been viewed over nine million times online.
Megan was just five when she joined her family in daily pickets: ‘I’d stand on a street corner in the heavy Kansas humidity, said Megan in the Ted Talk.
‘I was surrounded by a few dozen relatives with my tiny fists clutching a sign I couldn’t read yet, gays are worthy of death. This was the beginning.’
Megan ran the church’s social media presence, posting on Twitter up to 150 times a day from her phone.
After joining Twitter, Megan found users were genuinely curious about her beliefs, and she began meeting people she argued with on Twitter while picketing around the US.
She said: ‘The line between friend and foe was becoming blurred, we started to see each other as human beings’.
‘When I realised I was definitely going to go, I would take a few pages of the manuscript into work every day, just a few pages so he wouldn’t realise anything was missing, and I would photocopy it.
‘Gradually in a cupboard in the staff room, bit by bit, a photocopied manuscript grew and grew because I suspected that if I wasn’t able to get out with everything he would burn it or take it and hold it hostage.
‘That manuscript meant so much to me and it was the thing that I prioritised saving.
‘The only thing I prioritised beyond that was my daughter but at that point she was still inside me so she is as safe as she can be in that situation.’
Rowling spoke about her first marriage to Megan Phelps-Roper, host of The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast, which examines the backlash to the Edinburgh-based author’s views on gender identity.
Describing the night she walked out on Arantes, Rowling said: ‘There came a night where he became very angry with me and I cracked and I said ‘I want to leave’.
‘He became very violent and he said ‘You can leave but you’re not getting Jessica, I’m keeping her, I will hide her’.
‘So I put up a fight and I paid the price. There was a violent scene which terminated with me lying in the street.
‘I went to the police and filed a complaint and the next day went back to the house with the police and got Jessica.’
The author said she had fiercely protected her privacy after becoming famous because of her fears of being tracked down by Arantes.
She revealed he had followed her to Edinburgh and broken into the first home she bought with money from her publishing deal for her debut Potter novel, which was published in 1997. She said: ‘I was so ill-equipped for what happened to me.
‘It was changing faster than I could deal with and all the time I had this lurking fear because I know there is someone out there who does not wish me well.
‘The reason we left the first place was my ex-husband arrived and broke in. Moving became quite a pressing issue at that point.
‘I was trying to reconcile suddenly having a lot of press interest with really, really wanting to live under the radar for very concrete reasons.
‘I was living in a state of real tension I couldn’t express to many people.’
Arantes has previously admitted he had been violent towards her on the night she left.
He said: ‘She refused to go without Jessica and, despite my saying she could come back for her in the morning, there was a violent struggle.
‘I had to drag her out of the house at five in the morning, and I admit I slapped her very hard in the street.’
Rowling, who has been married to Dr Neil Murray since 2001, finished the Potter novel while living as a single mother on benefits in Edinburgh.
Free Press described the seven-episode podcast as an ‘audio documentary that examines some of the most contentious conflicts of our time through the life and career of the world’s most successful author’.
Podcast host Ms Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, pastor of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church.
The church was made famous by a 2007 Louis Theroux fly-on-the wall documentary on the extremist group, dubbed ‘the most hated family in America’.
After escaping the church in 2012, Ms Phelps-Roper became a political activist and journalist.
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