Daniel Radcliffe defends speaking out for trans community

"Harry Potter" film series star Daniel Radcliffe, who in 2020 responded to the novels' author J.K. Rowling's controversial comments about transgender people, remains glad he spoke out.

“The reason I felt very, very much as though I needed to say something when I did was because, particularly since finishing ‘Potter,’ I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge amount of identification with Potter on that," the actor, 33, said in an IndieWire interview, referring to his 2020 essay at The Trevor Project, which provides crisis-intervention and suicide-prevention services for LGBTQ youth.

"And so seeing them hurt on that day," he went on, "I was like, I wanted them to know that not everybody in the franchise felt that way. And that was really important."

Radcliffe, who plays the title role in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story," streaming Friday on The Roku Channel, added, “I’ve worked with The Trevor Project for more than 10 years, and so I don’t think I would’ve been able to look myself in the mirror had I not said anything."