J.K. Rowling’s announcement that Dumbledore was officially gay caused one hell of a lot of publicity, with some praising the decision and others considering it tokenism. Their argument was that it’s all well and good to say he’s gay after the books have wrapped up, but it would have been far more interesting if Rowling had incorporated this into the character from the beginning.
Anyhow, with the announcement that Jude Law was set to play him in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and armed with the knowledge that Dumbledore had once pursued a relationship with Johnny Depp’s fascist dark wizard, many assumed that the film would explore their unlikely connection. Sadly, however, that proved not to be the case, with director David Yates explaining beforehand that Dumbledore wouldn’t be “explicitly” gay in the sequel.
This prompted a fan campaign that demanded Yates and the studio “let Dumbledore be gay.” But, unfortunately for those who wanted to see wizard Jude Law getting rutty with wizard Johnny Depp, this never came to pass. Now though, perhaps stung by these criticisms, Rowling has laid out a little more about their relationship.
Speaking in a featurette on the home video release of The Crimes of Grindelwald, she said the following:
“Their relationship was incredibly intense. It was passionate, and it was a love relationship. But as happens in any relationship, gay or straight or whatever label we want to put on it, one never knows really what the other person is feeling. You can’t know, you can believe you know. So I’m less interested in the sexual side — though I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship — than I am in the sense of the emotions they felt for each other, which ultimately is the most fascinating thing about all human relationships.”
I’m with the more skeptical fans on this. It’s all well and good to talk about being inclusive, but you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is and do that in the work itself rather than explaining aspects of the character on social media or in interviews. Granted, I’m sure there were those at Warner Bros. who thought that having an explicitly and openly gay relationship in the movie might affect the international box office, but dammit, you’ve got to make a stand somewhere.
With Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald widely regarded as a critical and box office disappointment, it’s arguable that they should have just gone ahead with it anyways. At the very least, it would have made the turgid end result a tiny bit more interesting to talk about, don’t you think?
