Is 'Fantastic Beasts' Hiding The Actor Who Criticized JK Rowling?
Apparently, the Fantastic Beasts series is still a thing, and in April, we’re getting the third movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore – hopefully, his “secret” involves some kind of magic spell that will finally put this franchise out of its misery. But until then, the Wizarding World promotional machine keeps chugging along. This week, we got a series of character posters featuring everyone from young Dumbledore to Newt Scamander to … whatever the hell this goddamn “Teddy” thing is.
But one glaring omission is the character of Porpentina, played by Katherine Waterston. Despite being the female lead in the first two movies, Waterston doesn’t appear on any of these 18 character posters? Really? Weirder still, she didn’t even show up in the recent trailer.
All of this seems a tad suspicious considering that Waterston was one of the only Fantastic Beasts cast members to publicly denounce J.K. Rowling’s transphobic blog posts, sharing article excerpts on Instagram, implicitly referencing Rowling, including the quote: “you can’t be a feminist if you’re not for everyone’s human rights, notably other women’s human rights.”
We know that Waterston shot scenes for the movie and that her character is a very important part of the overarching story – as noted in the paltry source text, Newt and Porpentina end up getting married. Fans, too, seem to be speculating about the possible connection between Waterston’s posts and the conspicuous sidelining of her character.
While we don’t know exactly what the situation is, this is definitely odd. And with no other explanation being offered by anyone involved in the project, it sure seems like Rowling, the co-screenwriter and co-producer of the film, gave Waterston’s character the Poochie treatment purely because she stood up for trans rights on social media, which is … not great to say the least. Granted, Rowling doesn’t necessarily influence the film’s marketing decisions, but at this point, we wouldn’t be surprised if they simply cut all of Waterston’s scenes and overdubbed a line of dialogue about her character’s brand new invisibility cloak.
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Top Image: Warner Bros.
