“[I don’t believe in magic] in that sense. I find [magic] fascinating and I find it fun and I could read your cards for you now and I would hope we would both find it amusing but I wouldn’t want either of us to walk away believing in it.” [Grim face of determination]
We already knew from Sean Smith’s 2001 biography of Rowling that Jo Rowling read tarot cards with her friends at the Wyedean Comprehensive where she was Head Girl as a high school student.
One [of her friends from school] recalls, ‘Jo would entertain us with her brilliant wit and colorful stories. She was very inventive and clever at reading tarot cards and palms and weaving a story around it which was pure make believe but had us alternately gripped and then laughing’ (Sean Smith, J. K. Rowling: A Biography, p 62).
She claimed fluency in this art in one of her first American television interviews in 1999, too, seventeen years after graduation. As Beatrice Groves noted in her LeakyCauldron piece about the History of Magic Exhibition, from which series of articles I first saw the video clip above, the first of the books that she discusses with Stahl is Fortune Telling by Cards. “I know a lot about foretelling the future without, I have to say, believing in it.” Troubled Blood shows that she is still more than familiar with the Wicked Pack of Cards.
Do you think she was coached before this 1999 interview to be sure she said she didn’t believe in magic? That look she gives Stahl after saying she wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about her ability to tell fortunes with tarot cards is unusual. I suspect that, if the coaches existed, they weren’t delighted she brought up divinatory cartomancy!
Here’s the thing — the clip above was never aired on television, at least not in the United States. You can read the transcript of the show that was broadcast at Accio-Quotes; there’s nothing about her not believing in magic, Fortune Telling by Cards, or her reading Lesley Stahl’s future from the tarot card deck in her purse. There is this important bit in the transcript I was delighted to find:
ROWLING: But I don’t really think of these [new stories] as sequels. I see this as one huge novel that has been divided for the reader’s convenience into seven.
But magic? And tarot cards? That part of the 60 Minutes interview had to wait for a website called HarryLatino.com to post in 2007 and Beatrice Groves’ posts with same in 2018. Where HarryLatino.com got it, who knows? And, no surprise, only Professor Groves picked up on the tarot card reference after this site put the clip up on YouTube — and that only eleven years later.
Imagine the differences in the conversations during the Potter Panic if 60 Minutes in 1999 had aired the interview with the tarot cards segment and Wikipedia had not decided in 2010 to block the posting of information about Rowling’s skills in astrology on her Wiki page. Perhaps we should just be grateful.
This show, it turns out, has quite the history!
The interview, as you can tell from Rowling’s appearance as well as from the given date, was filmed in 1999. The transcript of the program as it was broadcast is in the post above, the link taking you to Accio-Quote.org.
Accio-Quote, though, has transcripts for “ten video clips, about two minutes each” that were broadcast in October, 2002, I’m guessing on 60 Minutes, as part of a “Publicity Tour for Book 5.” Order of the Phoenix did not come out until June, 2003, so I’m skeptical about the “publicity tour” bit. I think that 60 minutes realized it had Rowling material it hadn’t aired in 1999, she was a hot commodity in the fall of 2002 and not giving interviews, and they decided to edit the material they had into short clips.
How they broadcast these short clips, if they aired all of them or only some of them, as part of a 60 Minutes program, I have no idea. Perhaps nobody in the US ever saw the ‘Does JKR Believe in Magic?’ piece discussed in the article above until it was picked up overseas for YouTube by HarryLatino.com. The Accio-Quote page says the clips were “re-edited in 2006.” For a ratings bump before HP7, that came out in 2007?
Again, more questions than answers. Enjoy the 2002 transcript at Accio-Quote.org of the ten missing interview pieces that weren’t broadcast in 1999!
i met jo rowling and her sister dianne way back in 1994 at a dance in south london they were down from edinburgh and staying with friends it was easter weekend. i introduced myself and asked if i could buy them a drink, the story is easiest rendered through dialogue and i’d say this is pretty accurate.
“are you on your own?” asked jo
“yes” i replied
“that’s a bit weird isn’t it??“ she said
“no” i said innocently “i’m searching for someone”
“aren’t we all “ she said with a sudden laugh.
i smiled a “ha bloody ha” look and said
“no seriously i’ve got a visitor from ireland gone missing and he’s supposedly here..can i get you a drink?” i repeated
“shouldn’t you be looking for your visitor?” she said a little suspicious
“nah..i’ve looked, he’s pissed anyway.. i don’t wanna find him really.. he can look after himself.. i was ordered to come look for him here by my dad.. he’s wants to kill him” i added
“why does he want to kill him” she said looking a little concerned
“he started a fight earlier in the pub and made a holy fucking show of dad then disappeared.. he’s not really gonna kill him” i said reassuringly as a response to her expression.
“now can i get you girls a drink?” i said with a sigh of impatience.. there was a pause then
“can i ask you a question” she said curiously coyly
“yes of course” i replied amused
“do you believe in magic?” she said looking me straight in the eyes
i thought for a couple of seconds and knowing the best thing all round was to say yes i said “yes!” She wasn’t having it.
“No.. Really.. do you believe in magic?” she was serious, so i got serious.
we were up in the circle, the building had been a theatre, the dance floor was where the stalls would be and sometimes there was dancing on the stage too.
“yes i do believe in magic” i finally answered seriously and with conviction. she made a sort of gleeful little bob then looked back smiling at her sister and was clearly very pleased with my answer
“now please can i get you a drink??” i wanted a definitive reply
jo turned to her sister again, they consulted with looks, then back to me and like a happy 10 yr old girl at an ice cream van said enthusiastically “two orange juices please”
“oh do piss off” i said “have a real drink and then we’ll go dancing”
again she consulted with her sister and after a bit more persuading from me said in the same way as before with girlish enthusiasm
“two white wine spritzers please”
“Brilliant “ i said
“but we can’t get you one back!” she added hastily and looked at me in a way reminiscent of a little girl not having quite enough money for the ice cream man and not sure what the outcome will be
“don’t worry about that” i said laughing, amused at the looked on her face.. she was gorgeous.
i don’t know if she still believes in magic but i can tell you for certain and all honesty that she did used to really believe in magic! and i’ll add just to make this tale sound even more unlikely she had harry potter manuscript, notes, maps and drawings with her in a bag
they came back to my place and we talked about her “big idea” and literature in general through the night. They left around 9.30am easter sunday morning, they got on a 345 bus to clapham junction. The above dialogue was shouting speak for the most part as the music was pretty loud and as for how could you possibly remember that? the answer is i thought about jo and that night a lot in the intervening years before potter was published, she left a mark, she was a remarkable girl a really lovely and interesting person, diane was a lovely girl too. jo had a real edge and by the time we said goodbye i’d learned just how badly hurt this really good and lovely person was.. i felt very very sorry for her it was a magic night i’ll never forget but a bit sad too. God bless her!