Pedro Pascal said in a new Vanity Fair cover story that “bullies make me fucking sick” when the topic of J.K. Rowling was brought up. The “Harry Potter” author has regularly courted controversy since 2020 for sharing anti-trans views on social media. Pascal’s younger sister, Lux, came out as transgender in 2021. The actor made headlines in late April for slamming Rowling’s “heinous loser behavior” after she celebrated the U.K. Supreme Court’s anti-trans ruling that transgender women are not legally considered women and transgender men are not legally considered men.
Pascal’s other sister, Javiera, defended her brother’s comment, telling Vanity Fair: “But it is heinous loser behavior. And he said that as the older brother to someone saying that our little sister doesn’t exist.”
As the comment went viral across social media, Pascal said he briefly felt like “that kid that got sent to the principal’s office a lot for behavioral issues in public schools feeling scared and thinking, ‘What’d I do?’” But he knew he could not stay silent as Rowling celebrated the anti-trans ruling, which she did by posting a victory photo of herself drinking with the caption: “I love it when a plan comes together.”
“The one thing that I would say I agonized over a little bit was just, ‘Am I helping? Am I fucking helping?’” Pascal told the magazine. “It’s a situation that deserves the utmost elegance so that something can actually happen, and people will actually be protected. Listen, I want to protect the people I love. But it goes beyond that. Bullies make me fucking sick.”
In the aftermath of Pascal’s comment, some of Rowling’s defenders started sharing a viral clip of the actor taking his “Fantastic Four” co-star Vanessa Kirby’s hand at Comic-Con in order to somehow prove Pascal is presumptuous with women. But Kirby isn’t having that.
“What happened is we were both incredibly nervous going out in front of thousands of people who love this comic,” Kirby told Vanity Fair. “He wanted me to know that we were in this together, and I found it a lovely gesture and was very glad to squeeze his hand back.”
Pascal was far from the only prominent celebrity to condemn the U.K. Supreme Court’s decision. Actors such as his “The Last of Us” co-star Bella Ramsey and “Bridgerton” favorite Nicola Coughlan all signed an open letter opposing the anti-trans ruling.
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“We the undersigned film and television professionals stand in solidarity with the trans, non-binary and intersex communities who have been impacted by the Supreme Court ruling on April 17,” the letter read. “The Supreme Court’s ruling that, under the Equality Act, ‘woman’ is defined by biological sex, states that ‘the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man’. We believe the ruling undermines the lived reality and threatens the safety of trans, non-binary and intersex people living in the UK.”
Another signee of the letter was “I May Destroy You” Emmy nominee Paapa Essiedu, who just so happens to be taking on the role of Severus Snape in HBO’s “Harry Potter” television series. Rowling is closely involved in the development of the show but wrote on X that she has no problem with cast members who think differently than her.
“I don’t have the power to sack an actor from the series and I wouldn’t exercise it if I did,” Rowling wrote on X while sharing an article about Essiedu signing the letter. “I don’t believe in taking away people’s jobs or livelihoods because they hold legally protected beliefs that differ from mine.”
Head over to Vanity Fair’s website to read Pascal’s cover story in its entirety.
From Variety US