JK Rowling
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It’s one of the most talked about plays in years – and it hasn’t even had its first rehearsal yet.
It’s because TREMENDOUSa new one-act production premiering on August 2 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, dares to take on one of the most powerful – and controversial – women on the planet.
This is JK Rowling, billionaire creator of the Harry Potter universe, and now de facto leader of the gender-critical movement that seeks to ban transgender women from accessing spaces and services reserved for women.
The debate, on both sides of the Atlantic but particularly in the UK, has become one of the most treacherous fronts in the culture war, already involving the country’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, who told reporters he opposed teaching “gender ideology” in schools.
The controversy is undoubtedly an unwelcome side-event for Warner Bros. Discovery, where a big-budget Harry Potter series is currently underway at HBO, after recently hiring showrunner Francesca Gardiner and director Mark Mylod, both former Warner Bros. Successionwith Rowling’s blessing.
The play has already been met with a wave of backlash in the UK and US, particularly from right-wing media, with Breitbart, Fox News and other conservative outlets reporting it as uncritical of Rowling. Their readers have in turn flooded the production teams’ social media pages with hateful messages.
TREMENDOUS was written by American playwright and screenwriter Joshua Kaplan, who most recently worked on Max’s Tokyo Viceand the play’s creative team insists the production is not a set-up and has asked Rowling to attend the show – something Kaplan insists is a genuine invitation and not an attempt at “trolling”.
And this despite its controversial title: TREMENDOUS is a loaded acronym. It refers to “trans-exclusionary radical feminists” — a slur hurled by transgender activists at gender critics like Rowling. (It pales in comparison to the original title —TERF (C word) — which proved so controversial that the play’s original venue was canceled.)
“There’s a kind of reflex in me that I’ll take a word that people use in a derogatory way and throw it back in their face,” says Kaplan, 45, a gay man.
He began toying with the script in late 2020, shortly after Rowling began expressing critical views of transgender people on social media. The author was immediately labeled transphobic and garnered a lot of scorn, including from the three stars of the Harry Potter films — Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint — leading Kaplan to “imagine a conversation” between them.
“The idea is that Daniel, Emma and Rupert organize an intervention,” Kaplan explains. The Hollywood Reporter from Edinburgh, where rehearsals begin Monday. (So far, there has been only one table reading, conducted via Zoom.) Then there are “interspersed flashback scenes,” Kaplan says, that serve to explain how Rowling developed her rigid views on gender.
From a copy of the script obtained by The Hollywood ReporterThese scenes represent three moments in which Rowling — portrayed as a strong-willed and acerbic woman but far from a villain — confronts key male figures in her life: her first book publisher, her abusive ex-husband, and her father.
The scenes in which the actors play the Potter children depict the quartet as a tight-knit, teasing but affectionate group, torn apart by a mother figure who has veered into potentially dangerous and increasingly extreme oratorical territory. A debate ensues, but ultimately there is no change of heart.
In reality, no summit will take place, no pardons will be granted. Rowling has posted statements on social media suggesting she will “never forgive” Radcliffe, Watson and other celebrities for “sympathizing with a movement that seeks to erode women’s hard-won rights and who have used their platforms to encourage the transition of minors.”
“In many ways, the play is a family play,” Kaplan says. “In my mind, they were all three 11-year-old siblings and Jo (Rowling) was a parental figure. (…) We all have a kind of Freudian obsession with her.”
Contrary to media reports, Kaplan says finding an actress to play Rowling was a relatively straightforward process. Texas-born, London-based actress Laura Kay Bailey beat out 15 candidates for the role, winning the part through her Zoom audition.
Bailey, whose delicate features immediately evoke Rowling’s, worked with a dialect coach to nail the author’s Gloucestershire accent. “I’m not trying to imitate her, but I’m trying to get an essence of her – her way of speaking, her mannerisms,” Bailey says.
The 43-year-old actress, who plays Rowling from age 30 to 58 in the play, admits to being “woefully uninformed” about the debate at the heart of the play. “I did a lot of research once I was offered the role,” she says. “It’s a very charged subject in the UK and people are really divided. … The play tries to be as balanced as possible.”
Predictions that Rowling would unleash her team of lawyers TREMENDOUS — something she has not hesitated to do in the past — have not yet come to fruition. Rowling has acknowledged hearing about the play, however, while trading barbs with India Willoughby, a transgender television presenter and one of Rowling’s most frequent social media sparring partners.
When Willoughby joked that she would play Rowling, Rowling replied: “I would like to give my personal endorsement to India Willoughby’s application to play me on stage and will be investing heavily in Popcorn shares as soon as the casting is confirmed.”
With all the interest in advance, it’s no surprise that Kaplan and producer Barry Church-Woods already have bigger things in mind for TREMENDOUS — moving from Fringe Fest to a London tour, perhaps, and maybe even a Hollywood adaptation.
It is the same trajectory that has turned Baby reindeer a global phenomenon. Kaplan called upon his Tokyo Vice producer, Cambra Overend, to help guide the project to the screen. But before that, there’s a month of performances to be had in Edinburgh, where TREMENDOUS will be one of some 3,500 titles premiering at this year’s festival. Unlike the Fringe Fest plays presented in ReindeerHowever, it won’t be played in a dusty pub.
“I had imagined this play in a 40-person black box theater,” Kaplan says. “Now we’re in a 350-person ballroom, so we have a lot of space. The play has never been seen. It’s been read in its entirety three times in my life. So it’s kind of an all-inclusive experience.”