the fault in our stars author was asked if he'll watch the new harry potter show. he said no three times.

John Green in 2023. Photo: John Green, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via Vanity Fair, with PinkNews.

There was a stretch of the early 2010s when a certain kind of teenager owned two bookshelves' worth of feelings: seven Harry Potter books and everything John Green had written. One of those authors has now publicly declined to watch the other one's television show, and he did it with the economy of a man who saw the question coming.

Will he watch HBO's upcoming Harry Potter series? "No. No. No," Green told Vanity Fair's Hillary Busis, in an interview pegged to Hollywood, Ending, his first novel for adults.

what john green said about rowling

Asked about J.K. Rowling, Green said it makes him feel "sad. Very, very sad." Then the line that is now doing laps: "I think it's important when we talk about her to talk about the fact that supporting her work now is directly supporting efforts at the erasure of trans people, and that makes me really sad."

The part that lands hardest is smaller. "I think about all the trans friends I have who have Deathly Hallows tattoos," he said, "and how heartbreaking it is for them to have someone who created something that matters so much to them really betray them." Somewhere a tattoo artist is quietly booking cover-up consultations through 2027.

the answer from rowling's side

Vanity Fair ran no new response from her camp. It reprinted the statement a Rowling representative gave when Lilly Wachowski said something similar this month, which says Rowling "does not support legal actions aimed at harming transgender people or efforts to limit trans rights." Green's point is that the money goes where it goes regardless.

He is not a small voice to lose. The magazine puts his books at more than 60 million copies in print, and it notes the old overlap between his readers and hers. That is the whole reason this one stings: it is a man telling his own readers, many of whom grew up on both, which shelf he is standing next to.