Daniel Radcliffe chats with trans youth for The Trevor Project

Daniel Radcliffe honored Transgender Awareness Day on Friday by reaffirming his longstanding support for the LGBTQ+ community.

The ‘Harry Potter’ actor recently joined a group of six young transgender and non-binary people to host a heartfelt discussion about LGBTQ+ rights and covenanting. Footage of the cat was released by The Trevor Project this week as the first episode of its “Sharing Space” video series.

Describing the experience as “an absolute privilege,” Radcliffe said in a statement: “We listen to so many people talk about trans youth and hear about them so often in the news, but very rarely hear from these young people directly. ”

He added: “At the end of the day, if you’re talking about trans kids, it might be helpful to listen to trans kids.”

Watch “Sharing Space” with Daniel Radcliffe below.

During the discussion, Radcliffe speaks to those who hold “condescending” attitudes toward trans and non-binary youth, as well as people who “designate themselves” as LGBTQ+ allies without fully embodying that support in their daily lives. .

“Obviously, there are people in the world who just aren’t trying to engage in this conversation in good faith,” he explains. “I think most of the time it’s just because people don’t know a young trans person, so there’s just this theoretical idea about it in their head.”

Much of that reluctance, he said, can be changed by simply taking the time to educate yourself: “Much of the world depends on a gender binary.

Radcliffe’s remarks come as ‘Harry Potter’ author JK Rowling is once again sparking controversy for inflammatory remarks about the transgender community. In a new podcast, ‘The Witch Trials of JK Rowling’, she describes the trans rights movement as ‘illiberal in its methods and questionable in its ideas’, adding: ‘I believe, absolutely, that there is something something dangerous in this movement and that it must be questioned.

Although Radcliffe has credited Rowling with being “unquestionably responsible for the course” of her career in creating the character of Harry Potter, he nonetheless departed from the author’s transphobic views on more than one occasion. Prior to “Sharing Space,” he had a working relationship with The Trevor Project, an advocacy group dedicated to helping at-risk LGBTQ+ youth, for over a decade.

“The reason I really felt like I needed to say something when I did is because, especially since ‘Potter’ ended, I’ve met so many queer and trans children and young people who had a tremendous amount of identification with Potter about it,” the actor told IndieWire last year when asked about his decision to speak out against Rowling’s comments. And so seeing them hurt that day, I was like, I wanted them to know that not everyone in the franchise felt that way. And that was really important. »