JK Rowling revealed her abusive ex-husband hid the manuscript for the first Harry Potter novel to keep her from leaving him.
The author said Portuguese TV reporter Jorge Arantes had been holding the pages of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone “hostage” and she feared he would burn them.
After she found out where the manuscript was, she began secretly copying a few pages each day to make sure her work wouldn’t get lost.
She made the revelations on The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast, the first two episodes of which were released today.
During a teaser clip from the podcast, the author can be heard saying she “never tried to piss anyone off” while discussing controversial remarks about transgender rights.
JK Rowling opened up about her abusive ex-husband during The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast
Rowling married Arantes in 1992 after meeting him in a bar in Portugal, where she had moved to teach after her mother died
The Harry Potter author also spoke about an “extremely traumatic” miscarriage and death of her mother.
The 57-year-old writer caught up with American writer Megan Phelps-Roper at her home in Edinburgh to talk about her life, including her views on the transgender community.
Rowling married Arantes in 1992 after meeting him in a bar in Portugal, where she had moved to teach after her mother died.
The couple had a daughter Jessica, now 29, but she left in 1993 after Arantes dragged her from her home and attacked her.
Rowling spoke about her first marriage to Megan Phelps-Roper (pictured), host of The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast
JK Rowling revealed her abusive ex-husband hid the manuscript for the first Harry Potter novel to keep her from leaving him. (file photo)
She said: “The marriage had become very violent and very controlling. Every time I came home he searched my purse and I didn’t have a key to my own front door.
“It was a terrible state of tension to live in because I had to pretend I wasn’t going and I don’t think I’m a very good actor.
“It’s a terrible way to live, and yet the manuscript continued to grow, I had continued to write.
“He knew what this manuscript meant to me because at some point he took the manuscript and hid it. This was his hostage.
The Witch Trials of JK Rowling is a seven-part podcast in conversation with the author, hosted by American activist and journalist Megan Phelps-Roper
During the teaser clip posted to social media, Rowling can be heard saying, “I never meant to upset anyone”
JK Rowling with Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson at the world premiere of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2001
“When I realized I was definitely going, I took a few pages of the manuscript to work every day, just a few pages so he wouldn’t notice anything was missing, and I copied it.
“In a closet in the staff room, a photocopied manuscript grew and grew, because I suspected that if I didn’t come out with everything he would burn it or take it hostage.
Who is JK Rowling Podcast Host Megan Phelps-Roper?
Podcast host Megan Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, pastor of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church.
The church was made famous in a 2007 documentary by Louis Theroux about the extremist group dubbed “America’s Most Hated Family.”
Ms. Phelps-Roper, of Kansas, left the notorious church in 2012 after 27 years of controversial preaching, which included picketing American servicemen’s funerals and public celebrations, when strangers were diagnosed with cancer.
On BBC2’s Louis Theroux: Life on the Edge, Megan spoke about the “pain” she feels at being ostracized by her family and how thinking about her own mother, Shirley Phelps-Roper, has become even harder after she herself became a mother.
The Westboro Baptist Church has made international headlines many times for its firm stance against homosexuality.
It was founded by the late Fred Phelps, who, according to the church, had 13 children and 54 grandchildren.
Consisting primarily of the Kansas-based Phelps family, the religious group makes what they call a “pro- homosexuals”. agenda in America.
Theroux first encountered the group, known for their inflammatory homophobic hate speech, for his 2007 documentary The Most Hated Family In America and again for a sequel in 2011 in America’s Most Hated Family In Crisis.
In the original documentary, members at the funerals of US personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan held placards that read “God Hates Fags,” “Fags Doom Nations,” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and publicly celebrated as a stranger got cancer.
In 2013, Megan announced that she and her sister Grace, now 26, had left the controversial Westboro Baptist Church.
Her Ted talk I Grew Up in the Westboro Church – Here’s Why I Left, in which she describes the shift in perspective that led her to leave the church, has been viewed over nine million times online.
Megan was just five when she joined her family on the daily picket line: “I was standing on a street corner in the high humidity of Kansas,” Megan told Ted Talk.
“I was surrounded by a few dozen relatives, my little fists clutching a sign I couldn’t read yet, gays deserve to die. That was the beginning.”
Megan ran the church’s social media presence, posting on Twitter up to 150 times a day from her phone.
After joining Twitter, Megan found that users were genuinely curious about her beliefs, and she began meeting people she argued with on Twitter while picketing across the United States.
She said, “The line between friend and foe blurred, we started to see each other as people.”
“This manuscript meant so much to me, and it was the thing I prioritized saving.
“The only thing I prioritized beyond that was my daughter, but at that point she was still inside me, so she’s as safe as possible in this situation.”
Rowling spoke about her first marriage to Megan Phelps-Roper, host of The Witch Trials of JK Rowling podcast, which explores the backlash against the Edinburgh-based author’s views on gender identity.
Describing the night she walked out on Arantes, Rowling said, “There came a night where he got very angry with me and I broke down and said, ‘I want to go.’
“He got very violent and said, ‘You can go, but you won’t get Jessica, I’ll keep her, I’ll hide her’.
“So I fought back and paid the price. There was a scene of violence that ended with me lying on the street.
“I went to the police and filed a complaint and the next day I went back to the house with the police and got Jessica.”
The author said she was strict about her privacy after becoming famous because she feared being tracked down by Arantes.
She revealed that he followed her to Edinburgh and broke into the first house she bought with money from her publishing deal for her first Potter novel, published in 1997. She said: “I was so ill prepared for what happened to me.
“It was changing faster than I could handle it, and the whole time I had this lurking fear, because I know there’s someone out there who doesn’t wish me well.
“The reason we left the first house was because my ex-husband came and broke in. At this point, the move became a rather pressing issue.
“I’ve been trying to balance the sudden interest from the press with a really, real desire to live under the radar for very specific reasons.
“I was living in a state of real tension that I couldn’t express to many people.”
Arantes has previously admitted he was violent towards her the night she left.
He said: “She refused to go without Jessica and although I said she could come back in the morning there was quite a fight.
“I had to drag her out of the house at 5 a.m. and I admit I hit her very hard in the street.”
Rowling, who has been with Dr. Neil Murray finished the Potter novel while living in Edinburgh as a single mother on welfare.
During the teaser clip posted to social media, Rowling can be heard: “I’ve never tried to piss anyone off.
“However, I didn’t feel uncomfortable getting off my pedestal.”
Of the fans who accused Rowling of “ruining her legacy,” the author said, “You couldn’t have misunderstood me more deeply.”
In June 2020, the author wrote an essay expressing “deep concern” about the consequences of trans activism.
Free Press described the seven-episode podcast as an “audio documentary that explores some of the most contentious conflicts of our time through the life and career of the world’s most successful author.”
Podcast host Ms. Phelps-Roper is the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, pastor of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church.
The church was made famous in a 2007 documentary by Louis Theroux about the extremist group dubbed “America’s Most Hated Family.”
After escaping the church in 2012, Ms. Phelps-Roper became a political activist and journalist.