EXCLUSIVE: The producers of a buzzy Edinburgh Festival play about J.K. Rowling’s trans views are preparing for protests ahead of the show opening next month.
Penned by Joshua Kaplan, a Hollywood writer whose credits include HBO’s Tokyo Vice, TERF imagines a confrontation between Rowling and the stars of Harry Potter over her views on transgender rights.
The production is topical given Rowling’s near-daily pronouncements and hardened rhetoric on how trans rights have come into conflict with women’s rights. Her posts on X (once Twitter) have put her further at odds with Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint in recent months, and Kaplan sees TERF as a “family conversation” between loved ones with differing views.
In the real world, there have been public exchanges between Rowling and the Harry Potter stars as recently as this year. In April, Rowling accused Radcliffe and Watson of being “cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights.” Radcliffe told The Atlantic that he was saddened by Rowling’s stance.
Staged by veteran Edinburgh Festival Fringe producers at Civil Disobedience, TERF (an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist usually deployed in a pejorative context) had to change venue from Saint Stephens Theatre to the Assembly Rooms amid concerns over the controversy the play was attracting.
Barry Church-Woods, the co-founder of Civil Disobedience, said that the team is now putting security and other measures in place for protests. He told Deadline that they anticipate audience members could attempt to disrupt the play as it is performed.
“We expect that most people, if they’re intending on disrupting what we’re doing, that will happen in the auditorium of the theatre. We have processes in place that are going to deal with that,” said the producer, who has previously worked on Edinburgh shows with the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race star Courtney Act.
‘Harry Potter’
Courtesy Everett Collection
Security will be on hand to manage any disruption, but Church-Woods said Edinburgh audiences can be good at self-policing. “They shut it down quite quickly,” he explained. “If someone feels compelled to disrupt the performance, I’m hoping they’ll at least give it a moment to start, so they can see the work.”
There have already been protests online, with Church-Woods and others receiving abuse from those who think that the play is a roast of Rowling. The producer said his mother had been targeted by trolls after Breitbart, the far-right news site, wrote that Kaplan is a “queer-identifying screenwriter and fascist” who belongs to the “woke Gestapo.”
Church-Woods added that TERF cuts to the heart of the issues within the first two scenes, meaning that any “preconceived ideas” about Rowling being a “pantomime villain” should be dismantled early in the production.
Kaplan denied that TERF is a “hit piece” on Rowling. The idea for the play percolated in his mind during the pandemic when Rowling first started tweeting about trans rights. He wants it to be a nuanced exploration of her views, which he sees as the antithesis of reductive social media conversations.
Kaplan acknowledges that the original title of the play, TERF C***, did not support this ambition for nuance, so the C-word was dropped. “It was a misstep,” he said.
The writer, whose other credits include Designated Survivor, explained: “To understand the meaning behind why the thing is titled what it is, you have to see the play. If you just take the title on its own, you can make a lot of assumptions that are not borne out … Having that [C]-word in there was muddying the waters and wasn’t achieving the purpose I intended it to achieve.”
Rehearsals Underway
Rehearsals began on Monday, with the cast gathering for the first time to work with Kaplan’s 80-minute script. Rowling will be played by Laura Kay Bailey, a Texan actress who is 15 years younger than the Harry Potter author, but has mastered her Gloucestershire accent.
Piers MacKenzie features as Radcliffe, while Trelawny Kean and Tom Longmire star as Watson and Grint respectively. A trans actress also features in the play, but she has not been identified amid fears she will become a target for abuse and doxing.
Kaplan and Church-Woods deny British media reports that TERF has struggled to assemble a cast, but they acknowledged that some agents were wary about putting actors forward for the play.
R-L: Laura Kay Bailey (Rowling), Piers MacKenzie (Radcliffe), Trelawny Kean (Watson), Tom Longmire (Grint)
Church-Woods’ theory is that the upcoming Harry Potter TV series could be a reason for the reticence because it is likely to be a major employer of British actors. Rowling is involved in the Warner Bros. Discovery series, which recently named Francesca Gardiner and Mark Mylod as showrunners.
Kaplan is doing his best not to drive the cast crazy with “constant line changes,” but said Rowling’s daily tweets — such as agreeing to meet the new prime minister Keir Starmer — have meant that changes have been necessary to the script.
He added that the play deals with the “hardening” of Rowling’s “vitriol” towards trans women, charting her “psychological evolution.” For example, Rowling has repeatedly misgendered trans TV presenter India Willoughby in recent months and called her “Himdia Stillaboy.” She also appears to favor the phrase “trans-identified male,” whereas previously (such as in her infamous 2020 essay) she used the term “trans women.”
Rowling is aware of TERF having made reference to it on Twitter, but has not said anything substantive about the play. Lawyers have cleared Kaplan’s script and the writer is confident that Rowling will not attempt to censor the work because it is “small fry” and because of her well-known views on artistic freedom of expression.
Hollywood Producer Joins Show
TERF has drafted in the support of Cambra Overend, an Emmy-nominated producer on Tokyo Vice and co-founder of SRO Productions, which had a first-look deal with Amblin Partners. She will be on the ground in Edinburgh helping the production make its mark having collaborated with Kaplan in the past.
“He’s an incredibly witty, sharp, hilarious writer,” Overend told Deadline. On the controversy around the show, she added: “I don’t worry about that as I don’t think it’s politically inflammatory, which is kind of ironic given the kerfuffle around this.”
The Assembly Rooms space in which ‘TERF’ will be staged
Despite the change of venue (they never received an official explanation after they were thrown out of Saint Stephens Theatre), Church-Woods said early demand for tickets has been ahead of tracking for most Edinburgh shows. TERF opens on August 1 and runs until August 25.
Kaplan said he would like the show to transfer so it can run longer, having had to “kill darlings” in his script for the Fringe version. “It’s shorter [than I would like it to be]. I can’t have any technical stuff and it’s bare-bones,” he said. Kaplan added that he is open to future screen adaptations, but has given it little thought.
