Emma Watson speaks on ‘Harry Potter’ creator J.K. Rowling: ‘Really painful to me’

September 24, 2025 1

Emma Watson is seen during Milan Fashion Week on September 21, 2023, in Milan, Italy. (Arnold Jerocki/GC Images via Getty Images)

Emma Watson is opening up about her current relationship with Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling.

The actress shared her thoughts on Rowling’s anti-trans views while guesting on a recent episode of Jay Shetty‘s podcast On Purpose.

While Watson did not explicitly reference Rowling’s repeated rhetoric tied to the TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) movement — a group of people who believe transgender women are not women — she did comment on the situation, saying she is upset that a conversation with Rowling on the topic “was never made possible.”

“I just don’t want to say anything that continues to weaponize a really toxic debate and conversation, which is why I don’t comment or continue to comment — not because I don’t care about her or about the issue — but because the way that the conversation is being had feels really painful to me,” Watson said.

Watson also said she will always be grateful to Rowling for creating the character of Hermione Granger and that she thinks fondly of her time working with Rowling on the Harry Potter films.

“There is just no world in which I could ever cancel her out for — or cancel that out — for anything. It has to remain true — it is true,” Watson said.

The actress added, “I can love her, I can know she loved me, I can be grateful to her, I can know the things that she said are true, and there can be this whole other thing. My job feels like to just hold all of it, but the bigger thing is just what she’s done will never be taken away from me.”