Pottermore have today released an interview with Molly Sole, junior concept designer on the Fantastic Beasts movie, who worked on the original wand designs for the main characters:
We’re looking at 1920s wands. Newt’s wand. Tina’s wand. Queenie’s wand. The wand Colin Farrell used for swishing practice as his character, Graves. They’re all here on the page – beautiful, detailed illustrations for each of the main magical characters in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
‘I know from the Harry books that the wizard has to have an affinity with the wand. It picks them,’ she says. ‘It’s a bit like people and their dogs. I feel like you can see traces of the wand in the wizard and the wizard in the wand. So we had to imagine the feel and the material of the wand as a good partnership with the character.’
‘This one has to be for Newt,’ I say, pointing to a modest wooden wand.
‘We wanted it to relate somehow to the animal kingdom,’ she tells me, ‘but we thought it was sort-of inappropriate to give him anything that might have a trophy feel to it. We didn’t think he would be into that at all. The main part of this one is wood.
‘That’s got to be the closest thing to a sexy wand I’ve ever seen. It can only belong to Queenie.’
‘That’s Queenie’s, yes,’ Molly says. ‘[Alison Sudol] did have a little bit of influence on hers because she really likes Art Deco. We put her taste in that and it really helped us get the time period, the era, into the design.
‘Whereas Tina’s wand is more functional, more understated. David [Yates] didn’t want it to be too jazzy because that wouldn’t suit Tina. We used an antique conductor’s wand for the basis of Graves’s wand.’
What wand wood/core do you think our main magical trio have? We suspect Newt’s is made of Chestnut and Queenie’s Ebony – what do you think? Let us know on Twitter!
