The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling is a new podcast hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper. Megan grew up in a fundamentalist Christian community. She left the Westboro Baptist Church, knowing it would cost her family relationships and friendships. Ever since Megan has been “investigating belief and how it compels us to act and identify.”
Intrigued by the backlash Rowling has faced, first from the religious right and more recently from the queer left, she wrote to the Harry Potter author. Not only did Megan get a response, but a rare invitation to interview Rowling in her Edinburgh home. And this podcast is the result.
Episode one opens with people describing Harry Potter’s personal significance. The books offer hope; comfort through difficult childhoods; valuable lessons about the importance of friendship; a place of acceptance for outsiders; difference being embraced.
Interviewees are then asked about Rowling. And one by one they clam up, humming and hawing, making vague mention of controversy. In the most shocking vox pop, a woman claims Rowling’s own character would turn on her. “JK Rowling is literally putting trans lives at further risk. She just is… Hermione would punch this woman in the face right now.”
There’s a tension between celebration of Harry Potter and backlash against its author since she entered the debate about sex and gender. This has led to her books being “banned, boycotted, and even burned.” Rowling has been denounced by Harry Potter cast, lifelong fans, employees of her publisher.
We’ve all seen variations of the tweets saying that if Rowling had just stayed quiet, she could have been beloved by all for the rest of her life. A take which leaves her bemused. “I never set out to upset anyone,” Rowling says. “However, I was not uncomfortable getting off my pedestal.” As the podcast goes on it becomes clear that fame has not been a wholly positive experience, and that being deified is arguably just as dehumanizing as being demonized.
Megan is a deft, empathetic interviewer. At her prompting Rowling recalls dreaming up Harry Potter on a train aged 25, knowing she had to write it. Rowling speaks with obvious emotion about losing her mother unexpectedly, which “took a wrecking ball” to her life and defined the subsequent decade by loss. Her grief permeated the story. Harry’s longing for his parents, for family, enriched the books with emotional truth that made them real to millions of readers worldwide.
There’s a raw honesty to what Rowling discloses about a profound love for her daughter, contrasted with the horrors of an abusive, controlling marriage. After her two attempts to leave, Jorge Arantas searched her handbag whenever she left the house and denied her key to the flat they shared. He even kept the Harry Potter manuscript hostage. And as Rowling prepared to leave, she’d sneak a few pages at a time to work, photocopying them in small batches in case he burned it.
Rowling’s love for her daughter made her determined to escape: “I do remember thinking very clearly, she is not going to grow up and watch this happening to her mother. She is not going to grow up thinking that this is normal or okay.”
As Megan points out, it’s an astounding transformation, from being denied the key to her own flat to living in a castle with a loving family. But Rowling is clear: “I am still the same person. To me, the through line is very clear.”
Episode two delves deep into fundamentalism. Less time is spent in conversation with Rowling than examining the cultural significance of witches, and the history of witch hunts. And while the information about Christian fundamentalism is relevant to the backlash Rowling has suffered, it does slow down the podcast’s pacing.
But the introspection of a seven-part podcast – often missing from conflict-driven social media – takes the heat out of an ordinarily explosive debate. It also opens up the space for powerful reflections on the moral absolutism gripping Rowling’s critics across the political spectrum – and the similarities between their suppression tactics.
“There’s a huge appeal to black and white thinking. In many ways it’s the safest place to be. If you take an all-or-nothing position on anything, you will definitely find comrades. You will easily find a community.” Rowling is deeply interested in human nature – a claim that bears out in both her writing, and her insight into what makes her opponents tick.
She’s also unafraid to voice difficult truths: “What I feel very strongly, and what I’ve tried to show in the Potter books – we should mistrust ourselves most when we are certain. And we should question ourselves most when we receive a rush of adrenaline by doing or saying something… In my world view conscience speaks in a very small, inconvenient voice. And it’s normally saying to you: ‘Think again. Look more deeply. Consider this.’”
In the name of God, and in the name of trans rights, people have burned Rowling’s books. As well as being among the most read books ever published, Harry Potter was widely banned. And Rowling doesn’t hesitate to call out this authoritarianism.
“There is no book on this planet I would burn,” she says. “No book. Including books that I do think are damaging. Burning books is the last resort of people who cannot argue.”
The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling is now available on Apple and Spotify
