When the casting call went out for the Edinburgh Fringe’s edgiest show of the year, 16 women vied for the chance to play the lead.
Despite directors being “dead set” against casting a non-Brit, Laura Kay Bailey, a Texan, was selected to portray JK Rowling in
Terf, which will dramatise the rift between the author and the stars of Harry Potter when it hits the stage next month.
The title is an acronym of “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” and is used to refer to people who do not believe transgender identities are legitimate and oppose including trans women in the feminist movement.
Its writer Joshua Kaplan, a Hollywood screenwriter, says his play is not a “hit piece” on Rowling. Instead, he says, it offers a satirical exaggeration of the online trans debate of which Rowling has been a central figure.
At 43, Bailey is 15 years younger than Rowling but apparently does a “pitch perfect” imitation of her Gloucestershire voice, which has a “very slight, almost undetectable lisp”.
She has studied the author’s inflections, quirks, movements, poses and facial expressions, recognising that Rowling’s gesticulations have become bolder in recent years compared with videos of earlier interviews.
Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh, is well known for preferring to speak to her 14 million Twitter/X followers directly, often making headlines with her pronouncements on sex and gender with the author claiming the trans rights movement is seeking to “erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class”.
This has stoked a rift with Harry Potter actors
including Daniel Radcliffe, who responded to Rowling’s tweets by issuing a personal statement defending transgender people. The fall-out between this Harry Potter family is the basis of the play.
But what is Bailey’s stance on the trans debate and the woman she is portraying?
“I am fully aware I’m playing a character who’s just an absolute villain for so many people,” said the mother of two, who has lived in London for a decade. “But what I try to do as an actor, and what you are taught to do as a professional, is try to understand who is the human underneath that.”
Deciding whether she should play Rowling gave her pause.
“I had to just sort of think it over for 12 hours. But I think ultimately this is what theatre is about.” She recites one of her favourite quotes: “Theatre is where we work out our ever-changing definition of humanity”.
Bailey, who does not use Twitter, admits to having been “terribly uninformed, woefully uninformed” about the issue before taking the role.
Reading Rowling’s tweets therefore formed part of her “character research”, in which she also watched interviews with her and listened to the podcast
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling.
The
Harry Potter author has endured death threats and doxxing for some of her more contentious social media posts.
In the most striking example she posted an
April Fools thread in which she misgendered prominent trans women, including
Mridul Wadhwa, the head of a Scottish rape crisis centre, Munroe Bergdorf, a model and writer, and the broadcaster India Willoughby alongside convicted sex offenders.
Bailey recognises the need for debate about single-sex bathrooms and gender recognition certificates, but can’t understand some of Rowling’s online behaviour.
“Trans people deserve trans rights and human rights,” she said. “That’s just a given. And I don’t understand why she would attack and say some of the things she said on Twitter.”
This play asks the audience to reflect on what Bailey calls “viciousness” on “both sides”.
In one scene Rowling accuses Radcliffe of “treating propaganda as if it were gospel, opinion as if it were fact, and god forbid someone should even hint that maybe up is not down, you bravely silence them with 280 character smears”.
This is Bailey’s second time working at the Fringe, but she’s “never been a part of anything so contentious”.
“It’s a bit scary, or daunting, but it feels important. It feels like the project has depth. It’s exciting to be a part of something that has the potential to really move the needle on a topic.”
Bailey spent years working in New York theatre, including in an off-Broadway Tennessee Williams play where NY Magazine described her performance as “electrifying”. Coming back after a long career break during which she had two children thrust her into a new, older casting category.
She is pleased to be playing a character with “edge”. It is an opportunity to break away from the “pretty one-dimensional” roles available to her now, which are usually mum, corporate CEO or boss, and, with strange frequency, newscasters.
Last year she finished filming for
Cancelled, in which a “disgraced actress and her publicity team retreat to her penthouse apartment after images of her affair leak online”.
What matters to her is playing a believable Rowling, who she hopes would consider buying a ticket to the show.
“I think she should come and watch it,” said Bailey. “I think she should. I would if somebody was playing me on stage. I don’t think I could stay away.”
" is "use the fucking men's room because you're men," but they can't have that being an option because it's far too sensible and offends their narcissism.