Eddie Redmayne yearns to be an advocate for the trans community. After receiving considerable blowback in 2015 for taking on the role of trans painter Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl, the white, cisgender actor has discussed his intention to uphold the humanity of trans people. In interviews, he mentioned that he has read at least two books by trans authors (Conundrum by Jan Morris and Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw) and hailed the “important discussion” surrounding cis actors’ pretending to be trans for material gain. “I hope there’s a day when there are more trans actors and trans actresses playing trans parts, but also cisgender parts,” he said while promoting The Danish Girl.
Most recently, Redmayne once again joined the chorus of figures condemning the unapologetic, rampant, and deliberately violent transphobia of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. After speaking out against Rowling’s transphobic tweets from June, which erroneously opined that transness erases the “lived reality of women globally,” now the actor has indirectly critiqued the author following the revelation that her latest novel includes a cis male serial killer who hunts his victims by pretending to be a woman.
“There continues to be a hideous torrent of abuse towards trans people online and out in the world that is devastating,” he said in a recent interview with The Daily Mail. (He went on to suggest, however, that the online criticism directed at Rowling is “equally disgusting” as her well-documented trans-exclusionary feminism.)
Redmayne is not the only member of the Rowling Cinematic Universe to condemn the author’s hateful views on trans people. But where Harry Potter alums such as Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint have each done their part to affirm trans folks’ humanity after having worked with Rowling, the same cannot be said of Redmayne, who is currently on-set filming the third installment of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them series.
For all his talk of the “hideous abuse” faced by trans folks from high-powered TERFs, Redmayne appears content to have his checks essentially signed by one. One can imagine what a substantial stack of cash Redmayne netted for his recurring role in the series, which has grossed over one billion dollars worldwide.
In the context of his involvement with Rowling’s media empire, Redmayne’s recent statements in support of trans people registers as more as a PR move than a meaningful form of dissent. As we’ve seen throughout this summer, boycotts of Rowling are becoming commonplace. In mid-June, employees at Hachette U.K. — the publisher of Rowling’s forthcoming children’s book The Ickabog — told management they were “no longer prepared to work” on it following the publishing of a nearly 4,000 word anti-trans manifesto, which positioned trans-affirming bathroom measures as a imminent danger to cis women.
Just over a week later, news broke that four authors had quit Rowling’s literary agency, Blair Partnership, after the company refused to meaningfully condemn Rowling’s transphobia. There is now even a bookstore in Australia that refuses to sell Rowling’s books anymore.
If Eddie Redmayne wanted to genuinely express his unequivocal support of the trans community, he would drop out of Fantastic Beasts. He would not apologize, and he would explain that he cannot collaborate with someone whose views directly imperil the trans folks who helped add the veneer of authenticity to his performance in The Danish Girl. And even if he couldn’t drop out of the film without breaking a contract and/or sparking a lawsuit (which would still, in my opinion, be worth not working with Rowling), he could at least be transparent about the clear contradiction of his striving to be an ally to trans people while working with someone who endangers us daily.
But he has not been transparent. In fact, if there’s one thing Redmayne has been transparent about, it’s that the extent of his interest in advocating on behalf of trans folks is propping up his own brand as an ally. He aims to distance himself from a TERF without divesting from her. There is a word for this form of allyship: performative. Just as he performed the role of a trans woman in The Danish Girl, now Redmayne is performing the role of a trans ally in real life. Where the former performance was harmful in that it flattened trans identity to the particulars of transition, the latter perpetuates the fallacy that simply criticizing transphobia will make it go away. We need action. We need organizing. We need people in positions of power, like Eddie Redmayne, to use that power to subvert the figures and institutions that continue to make trans peoples’ rights into a subject of debate when there is no debate.
An Academy Award-winning actor with no shortage of professional opportunities, Redmayne has a moral obligation to sever his repellant relationship with J.K. Rowling immediately — an obligation he set for himself after publicly discussing his intention to advocate for trans equality. “I’m trying to learn to be an ally,” Redmayne said in 2015.
Five years and almost three Fantastic Beasts films later, the actor still has a lot left to learn.
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