Dawn French has made an appeal to the young population after being frustrated by a conversation about JK Rowling.
The sitcom star, known for French and Saunders and for her role as Geraldine in The Vicar of Dibleysaid in a new podcast that she was recently belittled for questioning why one of the Harry Potter author’s comments about the trans community is considered unacceptable.
The comedy star’s discussion on the topic comes days after Rowling said Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson “can save their apologies” for speaking out against her.
French, who “knows Jo a little” and in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Fearne Cottons told Happy place In a podcast, she said Rowling had paid “a heavy price” for expressing her views, but said a podcast host recently rebuked her when she asked to be “informed” about why people were so outraged by one of the author’s many controversial remarks.
According to French, the unnamed host told her: “You need to catch up – people can’t keep telling you how to be, because that’s not OK, and you need to catch up.”
However, this annoyed the actor, who argued: “It’s very powerful to say (‘I don’t know’), especially when you don’t know. It’s better than pretending you do know. It’s definitely better than forming an opinion about something you don’t know.”
Addressing younger people with whom she may have similar conversations in the future, French continued: “And I just say: please, especially you younger people, please educate me and explain this to me so I can understand it and not make that mistake again. But don’t tell me to catch up.”
French said Rowling was “a good person” who had “made her mistakes” and she supported the idea of ”robust debate that could change your mind,” calling it “the best thing in the world.”
However, she added that this would be “impossible if we just stick to our positions, defend them with spitting and anger, and then have to blame and cancel.”
French condemns the idea of ”cancel culture,” saying, “I really think we’re being pushed 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 become one because I’m careful about what I support and what I don’t for fear of getting in trouble.”
She said that “the last thing we should do as women is keep quiet.”
Rowling, who first faced backlash from several key cast members when she made controversial remarks about the trans community in 2020, has seen her relationship with the stars deteriorate amid increasingly toxic debates.
