Nicholas Hoult Cast As Latest Actor to Have to Distance Self From J.K. Rowling

HBO’s cursed television adaptation of Harry Potter has claimed yet another beloved star. Nicholas Hoult has been cast as Gilderoy Lockhart in the second season of the show, making him the latest actor who will have to publicly explain why his desire to be in Harry Potter takes priority over the safety of and respect for the trans community — which Potter author (and one of the show’s executive producers) J.K. Rowling has been relentlessly attacking for years.

Just earlier this week, actress Bel Powley, who will appear in the series as Petunia Dursley, condemned Rowling’s views while excusing her own involvement in in the series to the Telegraph, saying, “I strongly disagree with J.K. Rowling’s views on gender. I think that the trans community deserve safety and dignity and respect and total acceptance. But I love Harry Potter. I grew up with the books. I am from that first generation of readers and … I love magic and spookiness.” Tough to follow up your support of the trans community with a “but,” though I’m glad she clarified that her love for “spookiness” takes precedence over basic human rights for one of our most vulnerable and marginalized communities.

John Lithgow — whose last role was notably playing another bigoted children’s author in Broadway’s Giant — similarly had to justify his role as Albus Dumbledore in the project, telling The New Yorker Radio Hour, “The reasons to do it were much, much stronger than the reasons to protest against what Rowling has done and said. I do disagree with much of it, much of it I think has been twisted and misrepresented, and she has doubled down on it at her own cost.”

Hoult will surely face similar questions as he heads into filming for the show’s adaptation of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets this fall (much of which sees Harry and Ron hanging out in the girls’ bathroom, for what it’s worth … but don’t remind Rowling or she’ll freak out). The role of Gilderoy Lockhart — Hogwarts’s latest vain and inept Defense Against the Dark Arts professor — was originally played by Kenneth Branagh in the 2002 Chris Columbus–helmed film, which HBO seemingly plans on just rehashing (but presumably with far more exhausted publicists this time).