Featured Image Credit: Saturday Night Live/NBC
Topics: Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Emma Watson, TV and Film, Celebrity
Dan Seddon
Topics: Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Emma Watson, TV and Film, Celebrity
Harry Potter author JK Rowling was brutally parodied on the opening episode of Saturday Night Live season 51 this weekend.
In the 'Weekend Update' segment of the show - hosted by Scarlett Johansson's husband Colin Jost and Michael Che - everything from Sean 'Diddy' Combs' prison sentence to controversial AI actress Tilly Norwood got the slapstick treatment.
Then SNL cast member Bowen Yang emerged decked out in a silly rubber head, playing Dobby the House Elf from Rowling's iconic Wizarding World.
Cue knowing winks to the writer's ongoing social media crusade against trans rights.
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"Master Rowling has done so much for Dobby, and inclusion in general," the fake Dobby began.
"Remember when Dumbledore was gay after the books came out? And when Hermione was Black only on Broadway?
"And when Cho Chang was... hmm, was Cho Chang Asian? Dobby can't remember if the character named Cho Chang was Asian or not..."
The Weekend Update ripped into JK Rowling (NBC)
When Yang's character revealed that his 'master' was Rowling, he repeatedly banged his head on the table and yelled: "Oh no! Dobby wasn't supposed to say! Bad Dobby, bad Dobby, bad Dobby."
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This was a callback to the CGI elf's self-harm whenever he deems himself to have slipped up.
The segment then saw Dobby suffering a wardrobe malfunction as part of his costume fell down.
"Oh, Dobby's come undone. I'm sorry! My fatigues are not well-made!" he joked, styling it out.
Taking aim at Rowling's controversial attacks on the trans community, Yang continued: "Dobby came here to say that women have vaginas, and women's bathrooms are for women only, and girls, and ghosts of girls."
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Dobby proceeded to refer to himself as 'Millennial cringe' before running towards the audience and smacking his head against the camera.
"Dobby, why do you keep hurting yourself?" asked Che from his desk.
"Why?" Yang said. "Dobby doesn't know. Perhaps because house elves are somehow always the problem, even though we’re only one percent of the population, but house elves aren’t the victims. Master Rowling is. She gets so much hate mail."
He pulled out a T-shirt he joked had been sent to the author, with an image of Rowling emblazoned on there, with the words below it quipping: "They K Rowling."
JK Rowling shares handwritten note Emma Watson sent her containing one sentence that changed relationship
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This comes after Hermione Granger star Emma Watson addressed Rowling's incendiary comments on a podcast.
Appearing on the 'On Purpose With Jay Shetty' podcast, the host asked Watson about Rowling claiming she would 'never forgive' the Potter actors for standing publicly against her views.
“I really don’t believe that by having had that experience and holding the love and support and views that I have, mean that I can’t and don’t treasure Jo and the person that I had personal experiences with," she explained.
“I will never believe that one negates the other and that my experience of that person, I don’t get to keep and cherish to come back to our earlier thing.
“I just don’t think these things are either or. I think it’s my deepest wish that I hope people who don’t agree with my opinion will love me and I hope I can keep loving people who I don’t necessarily share the same opinion with."