David Tennant has urged Harry Potter author JK Rowling to “let people be.”
The Scottish actor was interviewed on ITV reality show The Assembly last weekend, which sees autistic, neurodivergent and learning disabled members of the public dialling in on tough topics with celebrities.
Asked about his outspoken support for the trans community, Tennant explained: “When I was a teenager, there was this thing that [Margaret] Thatcher’s government introduced called Section 28 which was about stopping the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools – which was basically saying it was illegal to talk about being gay in schools, or to suggest that that might be a normal way of behaving.
“We look back on that now as a medieval, absurd thing to try and say and I think the way the trans community is being demonised is exactly the same.”
For the past few years, Rowling has been a staunch and controversial campaigner against trans rights, which took a massive blow in a recent Supreme Court ruling – going as far as to label Tennant part of the ‘Gender Taliban’ in 2024 after he publicly criticised plans to ban trans women from certain spaces.
At the British LGBT Awards, he went on to call the 59-year-old and similarly minded people “a tiny bunch of little whinging f*****s who are on the wrong side of history.”
Reacting to the Rowling criticism on the latest episode of The Assembly, Tennant commented: “Listen, JK Rowling is a wonderful author who’s created brilliant stories and I wish her no ill will, but I hope that we can all, as a society, let people be. Just get out of people’s way.”
Related: Nicola Coughlan slams JK Rowling after Supreme Court trans ruling