"I planned from the start that none of them would die. Then midway through, which I think is a reflection of the fact that I wasn't in a very happy place, I started thinking I might polish one of them off."
Ian Gavan/Getty Images- Share this article on Facebook
- Share this article on Twitter
- Share this article on Email
- Show additional share options
- Share this article on Print
- Share this article on Comment
- Share this article on Whatsapp
- Share this article on Linkedin
- Share this article on Reddit
- Share this article on Pinit
- Share this article on Tumblr
LONDON – J.K. Rowling has not ruled out a return to Harry Potter should she have “a fabulous idea” for a book about her globally successful creation.
But the author, speaking to the BBC on the eve of the publication of her first novel written specifically for an adult audience, The Casual Vacancy, said it would have to be motivated by a good idea.
The writer said she has now reached a point in her career where she only wants to craft novels she is motivated to write and will not find herself writing something “just to make money.”
In a televised interview, Rowling also revealed she is tempted to go back and create a “director’s cut” of two of her Harry Potter novels.
STORY: J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’ May Shock Potter Loyalists
While not revealing which ones she’d like to go back to, she mentioned “one early one and one late one,” before explaining she had felt she rushed two instalments.
“I had to write on the run and there were times when it was really tough,” she told BBC arts editor Will Gompertz.
Her final Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, came out in 2007.
“And I read them, and I think ‘Oh God, maybe I’ll go back and do a director’s cut’, I don’t know.” Rowling said.
“But you know what, I’m proud I was writing under the conditions under which I was writing, no one will ever know how tough it was at times.”
The Potter creator told the BBC she penned her latest book because she “wanted to.”
It is aimed specifically at an older audience and includes adult themes and swear words.
“I hope that we’ve made it really clear that this isn’t a book for children,” she said.
The Casual Vacancyis set in an English village where the community comes to blows after tensions between the members of the rural idyll clash with those from the less well-healed members of an housing estate community.
It contains a lot of expletives and adult language.
Rowling said that the phenomenal success of Harry Potter meant she “had nothing to prove.”
“I certainly don’t mean that in an arrogant way,” she added, “I certainly don’t mean that I think I can’t improve as a writer.
“But Harry Potter truly liberated me in the sense that there’s only one reason to write, for me – if I genuinely have something I want to say, and I want to publish it.”
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day