Transcript of interview taken on the set of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore – all copyright to Warner Bros.
– On What FB3 Brings To The Table
“Honestly, I feel like this movie, more than the last two, is like an action movie, but it’s extremely, like the other two, it’s extremely character driven and it’s emotionally rooted. And it asks a lot of really interesting questions, I think, about power, and leadership, and who we allow to govern us, and what we allow to govern us.”
– On Grindelwald Making Moves
“Grindelwald’s making moves! He’s trying to make his play to ascend to dominance in the wizarding world – he’s on that like tyrant on the come up stage, and he’s activated in that. So really he’s trying to deceive the systems that we discover in this film are in place for the International Confederation of Wizards. He wants to deceive their processes and thus become a leader of the magical world.”
– On Where We Find Credence
“Where we find Credence is in a place of, having in some ways found the home he was looking for, the identity he was looking for, it’s almost as if he should be doing better. But of course what underlies it is this reality that it’s not really the home he was looking for, it’s not the father figure he was looking for, and that he’s really catching on slowly, even just on a visceral level, to the fact that he’s been deceived. And so, that’s present in him and he’s aware also of what’s happening in his body; his body is telling a different story than the one he’s being told.”
– On Dumbledore’s Complicated Past
“The person who seemed so infallible when we were first interfacing with him as a character, who really occupied this very important part of these sorts of mythological archetypes, which is he was the sage, and he is the one with this immaculate wisdom and he seems to have foreknowledge of everything. And when we first meet him we just are incredibly charmed by him and we perceive him throughout most of the Potter series to be the person who does know what’s going on, who does have a clear moral compass, who is sort of uncomplicated in his wisdom. And then what we’re discovering through the whole arc of this story is that actually, he’s a deeply deeply complicated person who comes from a deeply complicated and tragic past.”
– On Working With David Yates
“We made this film in the midst of a pandemic and David Yates remained utterly calm, utterly focused, constantly committed to us as actors, as members of the crew, he remained incredibly attentive and never let up in demanding from us the absolute best that we could deliver. And inspiring us to plunge deeper and to tap more intimate and challenging aspects of ourselves in the way that we portray these characters. There’s no off day, you know, every day that you come to set David is really really watching, he’s really listening and he’s really insistent on accomplishing the vision.”
– On Working With Mads Mikkelsen
“I have had a really joyful experience with Mads. I find him to be a very wonderful, very intelligent, very generous actor who flew into this, obviously under last minute circumstances, but really did so much to hit the ground running and bring his interpretation of this character. It came very fully formed and with idiosyncrasies that he alone brought to it, you know, amongst the three actors that we’ve had playing this shape-shifting character. He brought a lot of really unique elements and we were all extremely impressed because he somehow cultivated it in a week.”
– On Working With Jude Law
“For me, he nails it. He completely embodies Dumbledore. What’s really constantly impressive is the grace – Jude is an actor who proceeds through everything with an incredible amount of grace, and he really brings it full force to the fluidity of Albus’ movement and speech and way with words, way with other people. He does that while also showing us the less evolved, more broken, less graceful elements that are apart of what a younger Dumbledore carries with him.”
– On The Theme Of Love
“Love is such an important part of these narratives that it almost becomes a character; and we see it as this very tyrannical, – beautiful, but tyrannical – force, as we all know it to be in different capacities in our lives. And in the way that this movie is sort of a meditation on who and what we allow to rule us, the thing that is often out of our hands and out of our control, is whom we love, and this biting, cruel reality that whom we love we love forever, no matter the complexities that exist therein so often. It’s complicated to be human, and it’s complicated to connect, and love is a force beyond all of us.”
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore will be available to buy on DVD/BluRay/4K from Monday July 25th.
