Are the wands coming out behind the scenes of HBO‘s reboot?

J.K. Rowling has reacted to an article speculating about whether she will “sack” actor Paapa Essiedu, who has been cast in the upcoming series as Potions Professor Severus Snape.

Last week, Essiedu — along with Fantastic Beasts star Eddie Redmayne and Harry Potter film series actor Katie Leung — signed an open letter along with more than 400 others which called upon the United Kingdom’s entertainment industry to commit to protecting the trans community after the UK Supreme Court ruled that trans women should not be recognized as women and that “sex” should legally mean biological sex.

Initially, Rowling seemed to only vaguely and possibly reference the Harry Potter actors in a post on X on Sunday where the author criticized petition signers without naming names (“Some argue that signatories of these sorts of letters are motivated by fear: fear for their careers, of course, but also fear of their co-religionists, who include angry, narcissistic men who threaten and sometimes enact violence on non-believers; back-stabbing colleagues ever ready to report wrongthink,” Rowling wrote).