JK Rowling has her say in a new podcast — review

Eighteen months ago, writer and podcast host Megan Phelps-Roper wrote to JK Rowling requesting an interview for a podcast that would examine the “contentious conflicts” that have surrounded the Harry Potter author. These include accusations in the 1990s that her books were corrupting children and, more recently, her pronouncements about the rights of trans people that have put her at the centre of the culture wars. Rowling agreed and invited Phelps-Roper to visit her at home in Scotland for a series of conversations.

The resulting podcast is The Witch Trials of JK Rowling, a title that may well irritate Rowling’s detractors, who have long objected to a multimillionaire with 14mn followers on social media being portrayed as a victim. This seven-parter is published by The Free Press, a media company founded by Bari Weiss, a former New York Times writer and antagonist of the American left who is no stranger to controversy. Meanwhile Phelps-Roper suffered a taste of the limelight when she came to prominence as an escapee from the ultra-conservative Westboro Baptist Church.

There have been two episodes and, so far, there is much treading of old ground. A teaser for the series features Rowling, presumably in response to a question about her views on trans matters, saying she “never set out to upset anyone” and that fans who feel she has risked her legacy “could not have misunderstood me more profoundly. I do not walk around my house thinking about my legacy.” But that is all we have on Rowling’s most difficult and divisive chapter. Instead, the opening instalments follow her journey from unknown writer and benefits-reliant single mother to bestselling author. Rowling talks movingly about the death of her mother at 45, and how life took a dark turn after she moved to Portugal and married her first husband, who subjected her to psychological abuse, hiding the manuscript of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and has admitted that in one incident he slapped her.

If the first episode provides necessary background, the second drifts off course as it gives a meandering account of the moral panics stirred up by the religious right in the 1990s. There are only occasional interjections from Rowling here, most of which underline her alarm at the speed of her success and her fear of Potter-loving crowds. “What was happening to me in terms of fame was outstripping me constantly,” she says. Could this explain her indifference to fans who feel she has betrayed the spirit of inclusiveness running through her books?

At the very start, Phelps-Roper notes how, along with journalists, historians, lawyers and clinicians, the series will include the voices of trans teenagers and adults. Given how frequently trans people are left out of conversations about their rights, this feels important and right. But, thus far, the overwhelming impression given by The Witch Trials of JK Rowling is of a series playing for time.