Scottish actor Brian Cox, who has several movie credits to his name and is one of the stars of “Succession,” is an open supporter of transgender rights — not that they’ve been denied any that we can think of — but he is also fully supportive of ‘Harry Potty’ author and creator J.K. Rowling, who is a critic of the ideology, saying she ought to be able to speak her mind without any consequences.
Cox, 76, said recently he’s “very proud” of new legislation in his homeland that allows transgender people to change their legal gender without undergoing a medical diagnosis. In addition, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he also called the new law, which the British government vowed to block, “long-needed.”
“I don’t like the way she’s been treated, actually,” Cox, an Emmy award winner, said. “I think she’s entitled to her opinion; she’s entitled to say what she feels. As a woman, she’s very much entitled to say what she feels about her own body, and there’s nobody better to say that, as a woman.”
“So, I do feel that people have been a bit high-and-mighty about their own attitude towards J.K. Rowling, quite frankly,” he added.
In a past interview with Piers Morgan, Cox defended Rowling. In May, he called the criticism of the billionaire author “deeply unjust,” adding that today’s leftist-driving cancel culture is “a kind of modern-day McCarthyism.”
“It is a kind of raid on people’s sensibilities in order to reduce them and make them … I don’t know, there is so much hypocrisy in the whole thing,” the actor said.
“I find the whole thing completely hypocritical. I am not religious but there is a thing in the Bible where it says, ‘Let he or she without sin cast the first stone,’ and there seems to be a lot of casting of stones. And it is like a virus,” he continued.
“The hypocritical notion of ‘I am being liberal’ but actually you are being fascist and people should just stop it and behave themselves,” Cox concluded.
Most Harry Potter franchise stars have also distanced themselves from Rowling, with a notable exception: Ralph Fiennes, who played the villain Lord Voldemort; he is not comfortable with the way she’s being treated.
“I can’t understand the vitriol directed at her,” he said in 2021. “I can understand the heat of an argument, but I find this age of accusation and the need to condemn irrational. I find the level of hatred that people express about views that differ from theirs, and the violence of language towards others, disturbing.”
