Piers Morgan has called JK Rowling “one of the most woke people you could ever met”, in his latest defence of the Harry Potter author.
Morgan suggested that attempted boycotts of Rowling’s work over her views on transgender people constituted another example of “cancel culture”.
“Are we really at the stage where JK Rowling, one of the most woke people you could ever meet, ends up being a hashtag #RIPJKRowling?” the Good Morning Britain presenter told The Guardian. “That’s horrendous.”
Morgan previously defended Rowling in September, amid controversy over her new book Troubled Blood. The detective novel, which Rowling wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, features a male serial killer who disguises himself as a woman to trap a victim.
“I don’t even like JK Rowling,” Morgan tweeted during an argument with the Irish pop duo Jedward. “I just find you clowns demanding her book be burned when you haven’t even read it pathetic.”
Morgan and Rowling clashed on Twitter in 2017 after the author expressed her satisfaction over Morgan being criticised on live television.
In response, Morgan tweeted that Rowling was “superior, dismissive and arrogant”. Rowling then called Morgan a “celebrity toady”, and shared a screenshot of an article written by Morgan in 2010 in which he had effusively praised her.
Rowling has been embroiled in controversy this year after she took issue with the expression “people who menstruate” on Twitter.
She then suggested that allowing individuals to self-identify their gender could pose a potential threat to cisgender women in an essay published to her personal site. She has denied being transphobic.
