Director Kate Herron Says She Turned Down Work on Harry Potter — Twice!

Add director Kate Herron to the growing list of queer Hollywood creatives speaking up about turning down opportunities related to the HBO Max Harry Potter reboot series.On Thursday, after I Used to Be Funny director Ally Pankiw posted on Instagram about telling her team “absolutely f**king not” in response to an inquiry about potential meetings for the revamped Harry Potter series, fellow director Kate Herron popped into the comments section to say that she had also made her lack of interest crystal clear.“They’ve asked me twice and I’ve had to explain my answer is never gonna change from a no,” Herron wrote.Like Pankiw, Herron is an experienced television director with a bevy of high-profile credits to her name. In addition to executive producing and directing the first season of the Disney+ series Loki, Herron has directed on Sex Education, The Last of Us, and Margo’s Got Money Troubles, among others. Them has reached out to both Herron and to media relations contacts for the Harry Potter series and will update this story if we hear back.Herron’s objection to the series, like Pankiw’s, stems from Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling’s tilt into anti-trans politics in the 2020s. Since June 2020, Rowling has become increasingly involved in anti-trans causes, creating her own legal fund in 2025 to protect “women’s sex-based rights” — a dog whistle for efforts to exclude transgender women. Rowling will serve as an executive producer on the forthcoming Harry Potter series, which begins streaming on HBO Max this Christmas.After making her initial post about turning down a soft-check about her openness to working on the Harry Potter TV show, Pankiw took time to highlight Herron’s refusal on her Instagram Stories.“Also want to shout out the amazing [Kate Herron] who also said no…twice! And that’s actually hard!” Pankiw wrote — a reference to her own caption, in which she said “it simply is this easy to say no to funding transphobia!?