J.K. Rowling.Photo: Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic
J.K. Rowlingis claiming her first husband Jorge Arantes once held herHarry Pottermanuscript “hostage,” in an effort to keep her from leaving him.
In the first episode of theWitch Trials of J.K. Rowlingpodcast, which was released Tuesday, the controversial author recalled being in a “bad situation” with Arantes, including a “hugely traumatic” miscarriage that left her “not in a balanced state of mind.”
“The situation was a bad situation, but until you actually go through it, you don’t know what you would choose to do,” said Rowling, 57, of the marriage, which lasted from 1992 to 1995. “I left him twice before I left for good, and then I went back twice.”
She went on to say that her marriage had “turned very violent and very controlling,” at that point, during which time Arantes was “searching my handbag every time I [came] home.”
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Jorge Arantes and J.K Rowling.Shutterstock
“I haven’t got a key to my own front door, because he’s gotta control the front door,” Rowling said. “He’s not a stupid person — I think he knew, or suspected, that I was gonna try and bolt again.”
Rowling said “it was a horrible state of tension to live in because you have to act, and I don’t think I’m a very good actor; I don’t think I have a very good poker face.”
“And that was a huge strain — to act as though I wasn’t going. That’s a terrible way to live, and yet the manuscript kept growing; I had continued to write,” the author said.
She went on to accuse Arantes, saying, “In fact, he knew what that manuscript meant to me, because at a point, he took the manuscript and hid it. And that was his hostage.”
It got to the point where Rowling “would take a few pages of the manuscript into work every day, just a few pages so he wouldn’t realize anything was missing, and I would photocopy it,” when she’d made the decision to leave Arantes for good.
Rowling explained that the manuscript “still meant so much to” her, and that “the only thing I prioritized beyond that, obviously, was my daughter [Jessica Rowling Arantes, now 29]. But at that point, she’s still inside me, so she’s as safe as she can be in that situation.”
The first novel in the series,Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, would go on to be published in 1997. Its success, and that of its subsequent installments, catapulted Rowling to worldwide fame.
Contact information for Arantes, or an attorney for him, was not immediately available.
J.K. Rowling.Ben Pruchnie/Getty
Though she denied that her views on feminism are transphobic, shedoubled down on her controversial standpointsin a lengthy essay shared on her website days later.
PotteractorsDaniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson andRupert Grinteachspoke out against Rowling’s much-criticized remarksregarding the transgender community. Radcliffe, 33, stated definitively in a previous essay forThe Trevor Projectthat"transgender women are women."
source: people.com
