Lilly Wachowski: ‘If You Support Harry Potter, You’re Supporting Trans Genocide’

This sea change has even affected Lilly Wachowski.

In a candid interview, Wachowski spoke with Variety about her new studio, trans rights and a whole lot more.

What compelled you to form Anarchists United Foundation and Anarchists United Studios?

Anarchists United will also have the Directors Prep & Pitch Lab and United Spaces of Anarchy, a community hub providing office space to aspiring filmmakers, so it will basically serve as this ecosystem or incubator for creatives.

At the time of this ideating session with Sarah, I was doing a ton of mentoring through this awesome program called Queer Art Mentorship out of New York. I got 160 submissions and was like, “Holy shit! How am I going to pick one person?” I ended up taking on around 15 mentees out of this program and there was something that was extremely overwhelming about it but also telling as a trans person while all of this horror is happening to the trans community — the impossible amount of propaganda that has changed public opinion in a lot of different ways around trans people — that I could see how important connectivity and mentorship is. I think our connectivity is going to be the thing that saves us. We want to give people as much of a chance to work in this industry as we can while we’re also simultaneously trying to subvert the industry. We’re trying to connect as many people as we can, give them the tools that we can and provide a support network so that when we’re able to dismantle what’s happening in the industry, this network will be able to build something new in its place.

You’ve discussed how incredibly difficult it was to get $10 million to finance “The Hunted,” an action film with an all-trans cast. It seemed like culture was at a point where it was starting to embrace trans people and trans voices around the time of Laverne Cox and “Orange Is the New Black,” but has since taken several steps back.

I was going to ask you how you felt about the Ellisons and Paramount taking over your former home of Warner Bros.

I think all art is political.

Why the name “Anarchists United?”

You have one of the most renowned replies in Twitter history. Elon Musk tweeted out, “Take the red pill,” then Ivanka Trump enthusiastically wrote, “Taken!” to him, and then you replied, “Fuck both of you.” I’m curious how you feel about the co-opting of “The Matrix” by those on the right who don’t really seem to understand its messaging.

I mean, I can’t sit in a room and explain the movie to every single person who watches it. Even if I did sit in a room with Elon Musk and Ivanka Trump — yikes — it doesn’t matter. They’re not misunderstanding the film; they’re co-opting a message. And that’s what fascists do: They co-opt the messages of progressives and use it to their benefit to confuse and obfuscate what is going on and the intention of their ideology. They do it with everything. They do it with Martin Luther King Jr. Look at how they’ve changed the idea of what antisemitism is.

Elliot Page recently said in an interview that he’s not getting calls after “The Odyssey,” despite delivering a much-heralded performance in a movie that’s on track to make $2 billion. And the reason he’s not getting calls, despite being an Oscar-nominated actor in one of the biggest movies of the year, is almost certainly because he is trans.

What made you want “Cassie Workman Is Witchy AF” to be the first project for Anarchists United?

Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling are two people who have inflicted an enormous amount of cultural damage on the trans community. What are your thoughts on them?

There is a big “Harry Potter” series coming out on HBO soon and there are many people opposed to it because of J.K. Rowling’s transphobia.

You had an interesting quote once where you said that you can look back on your and Lana’s work “through the lens of our transness,” and I’m curious how that applies to “The Matrix” in particular.

When I look back, I can see the things that attracted me and Lana to that particular story. We were invested in liberation. So, without an understanding of what we were trying to liberate for ourselves, we were finding sympathetic and empathetic connections to other modes of liberation — specifically Black and brown liberation. There’s a reason why Zion is mostly Black and brown folks. We were inherently predisposed to seeing our own liberation connected to these other modes of liberation. When you talk about the suppressive system and how it is this system of control and how it governs society, for ourselves, being deeply closeted, we could feel there was an oppressive dynamic.

And the agents trying to take out your Fred Hampton.

That’s right. And then I get to my transition and I’m able to look back at all this stuff and see that the story is this gumbo of all of this stuff that we were living through at the time, as well as our own dreams and desires for getting out of the fucking closet.

Are there any upcoming projects with Anarchists United that you’re particularly excited about?