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J.K. Rowling Finally Responds to Criticism About Johnny Depp's Grindelwald Casting


In the spring of 2016, Amber Heard was granted a temporary restraining order against her then husband, Johnny Depp, after accusing him of domestic violence. The story sent shockwaves throughout Hollywood, and things only intensified as more details started trickling out. Several months later Heard dropped the charges against Depp, and her domestic violence case was dismissed. This happened in tandem with the finalization of their divorce.

The specifics of their case have never been confirmed, but Depp’s public image took a major hit as a result. Soon after, Harry Potter fans started protesting Depp’s casting as Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. (He had a cameo role in the first film, which came out in 2016, and has the titular role in the sequel, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.)

J.K. Rowling, who wrote the screenplays for both films, remained mum on the controversy for quite some time, but she finally spoke about it on Thursday, December 7, leaving a lengthy message on her personal website.

“When Johnny Depp was cast as Grindelwald, I thought he’d be wonderful in the role,” she wrote. “However, around the time of filming his cameo in the first movie, stories had appeared in the press that deeply concerned me and everyone most closely involved in the franchise. Harry Potter fans had legitimate questions and concerns about our choice to continue with Johnny Depp in the role. As David Yates, long-time Potter director, has already said, we naturally considered the possibility of recasting. I understand why some have been confused and angry about why that didn’t happen.”

Rowling says her inability to “speak openly to fans” about the Depp issue has been “difficult, frustrating, and at times painful.” Be she contends her silence was out of respect for the “agreements that have been put in place to protect the privacy of two people, both of whom have expressed a desire to get on with their lives.” (She’s presumably referring to Depp and Heard here.)

Rowling noted the people involved with The Crimes of Grindelwald are “genuinely happy” with Depp’s casting. However, she offered this caveat: “I accept that there will be those who are not satisfied with our choice of actor in the title role. However, conscience isn’t governable by committee. Within the fictional world and outside it, we all have to do what we believe to be the right thing.” You can read her full statement here.

The social media reactions to Rowling’s statement have been less than enthusiastic, to say the least. Many fans are upset more action wasn’t taken in this situation; they fear keeping Depp on board is only enabling his reported abuse. Here are just a few of the responses we found:

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is slated for a 2018 release.

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J.K. Rowling Just Shut Down Someone Who Mansplained What a Book Was to an Author





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J.K. Rowling Just Shut Down Someone Who Mansplained What a Book Was to an Author


Writing a book is a lot of work (or so I’ve heard). We’re talking pages and pages and time and pages and edits. So when author Laura Kalbag took to Twitter to announce the publication of her new book, she was probably pretty proud of her feat (as she should be!). But when a male user started mansplaining to her exactly what a book is, users spoke up—including one formidable publishing queen known as J.K. Rowling.

Rowling’s been known a time or two to dish out some wit on Twitter, notably engaging in feuds with President Donald Trump and taking down a certain anti-transgender conservative commentator. So although it’s no surprise she threw her hat into this foray, it’s beyond sweet that she came to the defense of this first-time author when this guy starting raining on her parade.

Screengrabbed for posterity by Twitterer Leah Reich, here’s Kalbag’s original tweet, followed by Erik Spiekermann’s beyond nit-picky response:

(Apparently he’s a pretty famous German typographer, so granted, maybe he’s a little sensitive to the effort that it takes for a team to design, edit, bind, and publish a book, but I don’t have the time to see if he goes around making this comment on every single “I wrote a book!” announcement on Twitter.)

People called him out on it, and he replied that of course he knew she was referring to authorship, but “people do not realize what it takes to make a book, beyond writing it. It does not fall out of the back of your computer.”

Which, granted. But I’m pretty sure everyone knows what the author means when she says “I’ve written a book!” Do we thank the trees that provided the (hopefully recycled) pages, too?

But what’s really irking is that if he wanted to clarify the process of creating a book, then that’s best done via an independent tweet explaining it. From his own account. Commenting on a first-time female author’s proud tweet about a book that took her three years start to finish is totally inappropriate.

Kalbag replied with an apology:

She also told Teen Vogue that she felt incredibly embarrassed about the whole thing:

“If I saw a similar tweet from a man to another woman, I would probably call it mansplaining,” she told Teen Vogue. “As others have pointed out, he hasn’t tweeted the same thing to a man who has written a book. I don’t believe Erik chose to nitpick my language consciously because I am a woman, but sometimes our biases can reveal themselves in this way. I’m also aware that English is not his first language, so the tweet may not have come out exactly as he intended. All that said, what he called me out on wasn’t factually correct. In English, we do say ‘write a book.’ But it still made me question myself. Especially given his standing in the design industry. I felt really embarrassed.”

Sigh. This is the last thing a woman who has published her first book needs—especially in an industry where women aren’t represented as equally or marketed as well as men.

But that’s when Rowling swooshed in with the perfect response:

To cap it off, Roxane Gay appeared, too!

Spiekermann also apologized on Twitter and tweeted that he’d written to her privately:

“It’s important that we shine a light on unpleasant interactions so people acknowledge how uncomfortable it can be for women and people from minority groups in the tech and design industries,” Kalbag continued in her chat with Teen Vogue. “Seeing those problems and trying to do better is the only way we’re going to make our industries change.”

Moral of the story, I guess, is to remember what your mama/papa/parent told you: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.”

Or Rowling will come for you.

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–J.K. Rowling Called Out Donald Trump After the Presidential Debate



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