Dawn French has appealed to young people after becoming frustrated by a conversation about JK Rowling.
The comedy star, best known for french and saunders and for playing Geraldine in The Vicar of Dibleysaid on a new podcast that she was recently disparaged for questioning why one of the Harry Potter author’s comments about the trans community was deemed unacceptable.
The comedy star’s discussion of the issue comes days after Rowling said Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson “can spare their apologies” for speaking out against her.
French, who “knows Jo a little” and appeared in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), told Fearne Cotton Happy place podcast that Rowling has “paid a huge price” for sharing her views, but said she was recently reprimanded by a podcast host when she asked to be “informed” of why people were so outraged by one of Rowling’s many controversial comments. the writer.
According to French, the anonymous presenter told him: “You have to catch up; people can’t be constantly teaching you how to be because this is not right and you have to catch up.”
However, this upset the actor, who argued: “It’s very powerful to say (‘I don’t know’), especially when you don’t know. That’s better than pretending you know. It’s certainly better than forming an opinion about something you don’t know.”
Addressing younger people with whom he might have similar conversations in the future, French continued: “And I just say, please, especially to you younger people, please educate me and explain this to me so I can understand and not do this. mistake again. But don’t tell me to catch up.”
French said Rowling was “a good person” who had “made her mistakes” and supported the idea of a “vigorous debate that might change her mind”, calling it “the best thing in the world”.
But he added that this would be “impossible if what we have to do is entrench ourselves in our positions, defend them by spitting and getting angry and then blaming and canceling.”
Deploring the idea of “cancel culture,” French said, “I really think we are being forced into corners where I can smell my own cowardice.
“I don’t like that; I hope I’ve never been a coward, but I’m starting to be because I’m being cautious about what I will or won’t support in case it causes problems.”
She said that, “as women especially,” the “last thing we should do is remain silent.”
Rowling, who first faced backlash from several key cast members when she shared controversial comments about the trans community in 2020, has seen her relationship with stars deteriorate amid an increasingly toxic debate.
