Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield wants you to know that he is a deeply moral person who believes watching Harry Potter movies funds “inhumane legislation” against transsexuals. He also wants you to know that he watched them anyway because they were “really good.”
Truly, the courage of our Hollywood elites knows no bounds.
Garfield, who is 42 years old and apparently just got around to watching the most popular film franchise of the last quarter-century, delivered this confession during a radio interview while promoting his own children’s fantasy movie. Let that marinate for a second. The man was on a press tour begging you to buy tickets to his kids’ movie while lecturing you about the morality of watching someone else’s kids’ movie.
He couldn’t even bring himself to say J.K. Rowling’s name during the interview. He called her “she that shall remain nameless” — a reference to Voldemort, the genocidal dark wizard villain of her own books. So he used the intellectual property of the woman he was insulting to insult her. That’s like keying someone’s car with their own house key and then asking to borrow their garage.
“I know it’s controversial and we shouldn’t be putting money in the pocket of inhumane legislation right now,” Garfield whimpered to Hits Radio, before immediately pivoting to how he did exactly that because a makeup artist named Claire did nice work on the magical creatures.
Claire! He threw the entire trans movement under the Hogwarts Express for Claire and her creature prosthetics!
Here’s the funniest part. The “inhumane legislation” Garfield was referring to is Rowling’s financial support of a campaign group called For Women Scotland, which brought a legal challenge over how the word “woman” is defined under UK law. In 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on — brace yourselves — biological sex.
So the “inhumane legislation” that Garfield believes his Harry Potter viewing funded was… a successful legal effort to define women as biological females. The highest court in the United Kingdom agreed with Rowling. But sure, Andrew, watching a movie about a kid with a magic wand is basically a hate crime.
This is part of a much larger and far more hilarious pattern in Hollywood. Every single celebrity who gets anywhere near the Harry Potter franchise goes through the same ridiculous ritual. They publicly agonize about how terrible Rowling is, they wring their hands for the cameras, they make sure everyone knows how much they support “the community” — and then they cash the check.
Actor John Lithgow reportedly considered walking away from his role as Dumbledore in the new HBO Harry Potter series over Rowling’s views. He stayed. Keira Knightley claimed she was “not aware” of boycott calls when she signed on to voice Professor Umbridge in the Harry Potter audiobooks. She kept the gig. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint all publicly distanced themselves from the woman who made them millionaires before they could legally drive a car. None of them returned the money.
Not a single dime.
The boycott efforts against Rowling’s empire have been a spectacular failure by every measurable standard. The 2023 Hogwarts Legacy video game was a massive bestseller. The new HBO series trailer has racked up over 130 million views across social media platforms this week. Rowling herself responded to the trailer on X by saying, “It’s going to be incredible. I’m so happy with it.”
Meanwhile, a trans-owned bookshop in Leeds called the Bookish Type is letting customers deface pages of Harry Potter novels for 25 pence a page. That’ll show her! Nothing says “we’re winning the culture war” like vandalizing children’s books in a store that nobody shops at.
Maya Forstater, head of the sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, called the book vandalism “the most striking example I’ve seen of trans activists misrepresenting where the real harm lies.” She pointed out that Rowling has been vindicated for raising alarms about gender medicine and children well before the government acknowledged the scandal.
But back to our hero Andrew Garfield and his brave moral stand of doing absolutely nothing differently. The writer John Nolte nailed the perfect framing on this one: Rowling believes she’s helping people by defending women’s rights. Garfield, by his own admission, believes watching Harry Potter hurts people — and did it anyway because Daniel Radcliffe was “so goddamn good.”
By his own moral framework, Garfield is the villain of this story. Rowling is acting on conviction. Garfield is acting on convenience. He wanted the street cred of publicly caring about trans people without the minor inconvenience of not watching one of the most popular film franchises in history.
That’s modern Hollywood activism in a nutshell, folks. They’ll denounce you on camera and then consume your content on the couch. They’ll call you Voldemort to your face and binge your franchise over the weekend. They’ll shed a tear for the trans community right up until it requires them to sacrifice literally anything — even two hours of screen time.
At least have the decency to enjoy Harry Potter in silence like the rest of us, Andrew. We don’t need a confession and three Hail Marys every time you press play.
