(LifeSiteNews) — Five years ago, no Hollywood celebrity would have dreamed of laughing off a transgender boycott. It would have been too dangerous.

Not anymore.

In an interview that promptly went viral, actress Keira Knightley was asked by Decider about the LGBT boycott of Harry Potter due to J.K. Rowling’s opposition to gender ideology.

Keira’s laugh says it all. Trans extremism has peaked and no one is afraid of it any more. pic.twitter.com/m0x5gJdAWs

— Kate Barker-Mawjee (@KateBMwriting) October 14, 2025

“I saw you’re voicing Professor Umbridge in the new Harry Potter audiobooks,” the journalist said. “I was wondering, are you aware that some fans are calling for a boycott given J.K. Rowling’s ongoing campaign against trans people?”

Knightley was having none of it.

“I was not aware of that, no,” she said with visible contempt. “I’m very sorry.” She laughed out loud. “You know, I think we’re all living in a period of time right now where we’re all going to have to figure out how to live together, aren’t we? And we’ve all got very different opinions. So I hope that we can all find respect.”

It was very obviously a rebuke. “Keira’s laugh says it all,” one activist wrote on X. “Trans extremism has peaked and no one is afraid of it anymore.” Journalist Elise McCue concurred: “Actress Keira Knightley refuses to kowtow to petty trans insanity. Refreshing!”

“No one was expecting Keira Knightly being the voice of reason, but here she is doing exactly what everyone should have done in the face of cancellation threats from trans activists: laugh at them,” Sall Grover, a CEO who has faced constant fire from trans activists, noted.

Trans activists took Knightley’s answer the same way. “If you are a transgender person facing state sanctioned bigotry and discrimination, this is Keira Knightley’s message to you,” one wrote.

“Keira Knightley calling J.K. Rowling’s anti-trans rhetoric just a ‘difference of opinion’ is wild,” another said angrily. “Being anti-trans isn’t an opinion, it’s a prejudice. You don’t ‘find respect’ for bigotry, you confront it. Anything else is complicity and cowardice.”

Even top TV writer Jill Weinberger, who has worked on shows such as NCIS, Chicago Fire, and Station 19, took to social media to condemn Knightley. “Keira Knightley cares so little about trans people that she couldn’t even be bothered to prep an answer about working w/ Rowling & just seemed very angry to be asked,” Weinberger wrote. “And no, I don’t believe that she didn’t know. Come on.”

I suspect Weinberger is right about one thing, at least — it seems unlikely that Knightley didn’t know about J.K. Rowling’s faceoff with the transgender movement. It has been one of the biggest cultural stories for several consecutive years now. But it is clear that Knightley simply doesn’t care, which is why she was so dismissive of a question obviously crafted by the journalist to draw her into the gender wars.

The transgender movement still holds tremendous institutional power, but the trajectory is reversed. Young people are abandoning the “non-binary” label as it loses its trendiness. Liberal publications like The Atlantic are publishing essays explaining why progressives ignored the science on sex change “treatments.” And J.K. Rowling is taking aim at trans activists daily from her perch on X.

As Keira Knightley’s laugh heard round the world told us, the spell is beginning to break.