Why J.K. Rowling Declined To Join the HBO Max ‘Harry Potter’ Reunion

Potterheads now know the reason why J.K. Rowling didn't reunite with the cast for the upcoming HBO Max Harry Potter reunion.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the famed author was invited to participate in the reunion special but her team believed that the archived footage from a 2019 interview on the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London would be sufficient enough. The report noted that Rowling's clips were "used sparingly" in the feature and that she primarily commented about the first of eight films in the franchise.

The Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts will focus on the legacy of the films and not so much the books that Rowling penned. Insiders told the outlet that Rowling's controversy surrounding her past statements about trans people did not play a part in their decision to not have the Harry Potter creator participate in the discussion.

Despite Rowling's claims that she is not transphobic and that "trans lives matter," she has shared TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) ideology over the years. The harmful rhetoric of the movement believes that trans women are not women.

Last year, Rowling released her fifth book in her "Cormoran Strike" series, "Troubled Blood," under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The book followed the fictional life of a cisgender man who dressed up as a woman to kill women.