J.K. Rowling states she will never top “Harry Potter” during Lumos charity event
In an interview with Sky News last night at the Lumos fundraiser, J.K. Rowling said that she will never write anything better than Harry Potter. The author, who was interviewed in front of the Hogwarts model at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter, said,
As far back as 2000 I knew I would never top Harry Potter. I knew that before the series ended. If you’ve had the kind of success that you never expected you can think, ‘Oh, no, how dreadful. I’ll never ever top that,’ or you can say, ‘How incredibly marvellous and liberating that I made money beyond my wildest dreams and that I can affect issues I really care about.’
Rowling continued to say that she has always loved to write, and so of course she will keep writing. But she said that she doesn’t sit around, thinking she must write a certain type of novel to prove herself. She said, “I always did write what I wanted to write, and I will continue to do that.”
The event took place to raise money for Rowling’s charity Lumos, which supports children who have been institutionalised in Europe. You can see the videos we posted from the red carpet arrival and after party last night, which include arrivals from J.K. Rowling herself, as well as Alan Rickman, David Heyman, Warwick Davis, and Evanna Lynch right here.
Rowling said that she was consciously thinking about the issues involved with taking a child away from its family as she wrote and that she wasn’t surprised this was apparent in the books. She said,
These themes are in the Harry Potter books. Voldemort was himself raised in an institution, so, spookily, it was something I was very much thinking about.
A clip from the interview is available to watch on the Sky News website. To find out more about the charity please visit the website.
What do you think about Rowling’s attitude toward her writing? Are you interested to learn how these issues impacted the Harry Potter series? Let us know in the comments.
