Saturday Night Live recruited the perfect guest to address the latest drama surrounding Harry Potter author J.K Rowling.
During the season 51 premiere, “Weekend Update” brought out Dobby the House Elf — Bowen Yang in terrifying prosthetics — to speak about Rowling’s anti-trans views amid her reignited feud with the franchise’s star Emma Watson. Shaking in his seat, Dobby initially hesitated to comment on the subject, but then segment anchor Michael Che offered him some encouragement.
“You don’t have to be scared,” Che told the elf.
“Scared? Why would Dobby be scared, sir? Dobby’s just about to publicly weigh in on trans people, that’s all,” Yang’s Dobby began. “Master sent Dobby to go on the telly and define, once and for all, what a woman is, sir!”
Will Heath/NBC
Bowen Yang as Dobby the House Elf on ‘Weekend Update’
After accidentally revealing Rowling as his master, Yang’s Dobby exclaimed, “Oh, no, Dobby wasn’t supposed to say!” Banging his head on the desk, he cried, “Bad Dobby, bad Dobby, bad Dobby.”
Around this point, Dobby’s pillowcase tunic began to slip off his shoulders — but Yang took the wardrobe malfunction in stride.
“Oh, Dobby’s come undone,” Yang said, holding up the straps of the garment. “I’m sorry! My fatigues are not well-made!”
Continuing the bit, Yang’s Dobby made his best effort to defend Rowling’s anti-trans stance, arguing, “Master Rowling has done so much for Dobby and for inclusion in general. Remember when Dumbledore was gay, after the books came out? And when Hermione was Black, only on Broadway? And when Cho Chang was…”
Trailing off, Dobby said, “Hmm… was Cho Chang Asian? Dobby can’t remember if the character Cho Chang was Asian.”
After another slipup, Dobby leapt from behind the “Weekend Update” table to bang his head against the camera, prompting Che to ask why the elf felt the need to self-punish.
NBC
Bowen Yang holds up his drab tunic as Dobby the House Elf on ‘Weekend Update’ with Michael Che and Colin Jost
“Why? Dobby doesn’t know. Perhaps because house elves are somehow always the problem, even though we’re only 1 percent of the population,” he said, lampshading the trans community getting scapegoated by rhetoric tied to the TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) movement. “But house elves aren’t the victims. Master Rowling is! She gets so much hate mail.”
Dobby then whipped out a shirt that read “They K. Rowling,” showing it off as an example of the hate Rowling receives. When co-anchor Colin Jost pointed out that, per the book’s lore, the clothing items mean Dobby is now free, the house elf jumped for joy — while Yang desperately clung to the fabric at his shoulders to keep it from sliding entirely off.
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When the sketch came to an end, Jost and Che immediately began joking about Yang’s wardrobe malfunction.
“We’ve seen it all,” Jost quipped. “We’re seeing it all.”
Yang then dropped the strap and struck a pose, embracing the mishap before exiting the stage.
The latest dig at Rowling comes after she made headlines for slamming Watson, who refused to defend the author’s view on trans rights but also stated that she still treasures her experience working alongside Rowling during her Harry Potter days.
“Like other people who’ve never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she’s ignorant of how ignorant she is,” Rowling wrote in a scathing post on X. “Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public — but I have the same right, and I’ve finally decided to exercise it.”
Watch SNL tackle Rowling’s anti-trans views in the full “Weekend Update” sketch above.
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