With his peacock blue coat, bow tie and battered suitcase, Eddie Redmayne stars as J.K. Rowling’s latest magical hero in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Eddie spoke with Reuters’s Jill Serjeant ahead of the movie opening about his favourite beasts and his hopes for his character, Newt Scamander.
How much of Newt came from you and how much from J.K. Rowling?
Newt was wonderfully well defined on the page and then it was about hearing where Newt came from in her imagination. She wrote that Newt walks his own walk and that he has a Buster Keaton-eseque quality.
So I met a man who tracks animals for a living and he said that if you are trying to be absolutely silent, you turn your feet out. So I brought in that open-toed stance, which was great until I had to do stunts running like that and I kept pulling muscles.
Do you know if you’re going to be in all five of the Beasts movies?
No, I don’t. The whole production is so top-secret that at nights our scripts would get locked up and put in a safe. Jo has kept the story very close to her.
Katherine Waterston and Eddie Redmayne.How do you feel about becoming a young adult icon, like Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry Potter?
I don’t really know. How does one prepare for that? There’s nothing you can do really. A few more people ask for selfies and that’s about it. I think?
What was it like acting against the computer-generated beasts?
With the erumpent, we had some of the guys who worked on War Horse make a huge puppet that I rehearsed with for a few weeks. Then when it came to shooting, it would go away and I would have the sense memory.
Did you have a favourite beast?
I think Pickett was my favorite. He has got attachment issues and he just wants a bit of a hug.
Where would you like Newt’s character to go in the second film?
You get a sense when you see Leda Lestrange’s photograph that this girl has clearly had an effect on him, so that would be interesting to see. Also you hear that Newt has spent a year out in the field in Equatorial Guinea. I would love to see him out with his sleeves rolled up, wrangling some of these extraordinary creatures.
Graphics help bring J.K. Rowling’s magical world to life
Marie-Louise Gumuchian, Reuters
On a table in a London studio, copies of The New York Ghost newspaper lie beside a pile of applications for wand permits. Nearby a “Witch’s Friend” magazine teases winter fashion trends.
The items by graphic designers Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima are among the fantastical creations helping bring to life Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s latest offering from her magical world of witches and wizards, movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
The duo, who met on the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets set, worked on eight films in the hugely popular series, designing items like The Daily Prophet newspaper with moving pictures to the magically revealing Marauder’s Map.
Along with other creative teams from the Harry Potter films, they have returned with more intricate designs for spin-off Fantastic Beasts to help tell the new story of ‘magizoologist’ Newt Scamander.
“It was quite an organic transition for most people, because quite a lot of the people who had worked on the Harry Potter films stayed together for Fantastic Beasts,” Miraphora said.
“The things that made it naturally easy for anyone creatively was that it was a new location, a specific period in time as opposed to a contemporary period referencing historical periods so having those markers... are actually kind of really good anchors to build on.”
The duo came up with all sorts of graphic designs for the movie – from a poster for The Blind Pig speakeasy to the Magical Congress of the United States of America’s insignia.
“Newt’s passport, like all his little belongings and all the medicines labels he uses to treat the beasts, we had to do one by one,” Eduardo said.
The designers start work six months before shooting with visual research and questions for Rowling to get more information for items like Scamander’s passport.
“We need to ask Jo those things like what’s his birthday, where was he born, all those details that you might not see,” Miraphora said. “We have to create the integrity of a piece.”
Mina and Lima are exhibiting their work at the four-storey House of MinaLima, where fans can view graphic art prints from the films. On display across the building’s wooden floors and draped windows are posters, signage, front pages and props.
“It’s completely immersive, you feel that perhaps the building could be part of that universe of the wizarding world,” Miraphora said. “We wanted people to feel that they are maybe in Diagon Alley, but now a bit in New York as well,” Eduardo added.