Redmayne on casting spells, becoming leader & dancing again in Fantastic Beasts 3
Eddie Redmayne steps into a leadership role in the third installment of J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts franchise — The Secrets of Dumbledore.
Ahead of the Philippine premiere in cinemas nationwide on Black Saturday, April 16, The Philippine STAR attended an advanced screening and virtual presscon with the lead cast, including the Oscar-winning Redmayne who plays the magizoologist (a wizard who studies magical creatures) Newt Scamander.
In The Secrets of Dumbledore, Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) enlists the help of his student Newt, and appoints him as the leader of a band of wizards and a Muggle to help defeat his old friend turned foe, Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen). The upcoming film is directed by David Yates, who also megged the final four films of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
“Grindelwald is in hiding since we’ve last seen him,” said Redmayne. “And Dumbledore has recruited this group of wizards, this band to go and hunt him down. Newt has been let in for the first time. Normally, Newt is sort of sent off to do Dumbledore’s hard work without having a clue on what’s going on. This time, he’s been given a chink into what’s going on, but the general consensus is there’s a plan unfolding with this band.”
The British actor said he loved how his character’s relationship with Dumbledore changed in the latest Fantastic Beasts film. “What I love is that it’s got that complexity of a sort of master and apprentice. But it’s evolved throughout the movies to being something almost fraternal, I would say in this one, an older brother and younger brother.”
He continued, “There’s a moment in this film where Newt even takes it upon himself, sees the vulnerability in Dumbledore and tries to pass on a moment of wisdom to him.”
The film opens with Newt at his “best and happiest” — being alone in the wild and tracking down beasts (or in this case, a Qilin, a creature that can tell the purest of hearts) to be housed in his magical suitcase. It turns out this is part of a special mission from Dumbledore. The Qilin has an important role in the election of the new president of the wizarding world, which Grindelwald is hell-bent on lording over.
What Redmayne loved about this story arc was how a fundamentally introverted guy like Newt could be seen as a potential leader by Dumbledore “albeit in an unconventional way.”
“And what I love about this movie — it’s like a wizarding heist movie in which this group of outsiders all band together. All of us are unconventional and the leader is unconventional,” he added.
As for working anew with Law, Redmayne said, “I adore this man. He was a friend before we started working together. And one of the real joys about working on a series of films is you get to push things. You get to feel so comfortable working with each other that you can kind of push boundaries, I suppose.”
Pushing boundaries was also what Redmayne did in fleshing out the physicality plus “social awkwardness” of Newt. Director Yates recalled the actor was already immersed in his character from the time they were simply doing a costume test for the first film, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, in 2016.
He said, “The way he started to fall into that character of Newt Scamander was almost Chaplin-esque. There was a sort of transformative moment where Eddie was over here, walked in front of the camera, and became this other human being. It was beautiful and special to see, and I leaned over to my DOP (director of photography) and said, ‘This is amazing.’”
Yates further shared that Redmayne was “incredibly committed” that there was a scene in the first installment where “I wanted a very particular walk that weaved through a crowd as he was carrying his suitcase. And by Take 12 I thought we had it, but Eddie got so obsessed. He wanted to do it again and again and again and again, until we got to the point where I had to literally physically restrain him and say, ‘You’ve got the walk, you don’t have to do it again.’
“But you know, that’s typical of him. He wants to give everything and often does, and takes the responsibility of playing a character in this world. Knowing that people respond to the character, respond to him, he wants to ensure that he gives every ounce of being to it and to deliver something that’s truly wonderful to watch.”
What’s wonderful, if not a riot to watch, is the dancing Redmayne does again in The Secrets of Dumbledore. When asked more about it during the mediacon, the 40-year-old was laughing in recollection how he and co-star Callum Turner (his older brother Theseus in the film), executed the prison cave scene, where they had to showcase some footwork to ward off deadly, crab-like creatures called Baby Manticores.
The “intense dance things,” said Redmayne, stemmed from the equally funny mating dance he did in the first movie to lure back a missing rhino/elephant hybrid creature, Erumpent, to his suitcase. He noted that something in that scene clearly tickled the director and the producers’ imagination that each succeeding film features an iteration “written intricately in detail.”
“It’s basically that Eddie makes a fool of themselves,” he laughed.
“But, of course, we took it incredibly seriously,” Redmayne added, revealing that they had to watch different wildlife programs as references. “And then, we did some very embarrassing outtakes, which probably exist because of me sending videos to David and going, ‘How about this?’ You know, sort of really intense dance things. And then eventually, it was, ‘How do I just wiggle and put my hands in the air?’
“At the same time, the special effects department was coming up with ideas of what the creatures might be and so it ended up being — I’d love to say a marriage, but it was more a sort of car crash collision of two ridiculousness (laughs). The weird thing is, it was bloody exhausting. And David would have me coming down like the whole prison. And by the time I got to my lines, I was (panting and breathless).”
This was also because he was both holding a heavy lantern to light his way into this huge cave and swaying his hips. He would have shoulder massages in between takes so he could still shoot the next day. “Anyway, it was quite fun. But it was all worth it when Callum had to have a go.”
So fun perhaps that to have people break into a dance was one spell he’d wish to cast into the real world. “I think in life, randomly, to make yourself feel better and just be like making people randomly dance on the tube will be quite fun,” he said.
Meanwhile, Redmayne was asked about some of the most meaningful lessons he gleaned from portraying Newt.
“That’s a lovely question. Actually, I adore Newt. And there are many things that I love about him. I love that he’s an incredibly empathetic person. He looks for the good in people. He’s also very happy in his own company and in the company of creatures. He’s someone that enjoys silence. I’m someone that in my anxiety tends to feel — like what I’m doing now — too many words.
“But along with that, there are various sorts of epithets or things that he said which I now try to live by. One is that worrying means you suffer twice, which was in the first movie. I am a great worrier and I always tell myself like, if a horrendous thing is going to happen, there’s no point worrying about it anyway, and you’re just gonna have doubled your pain.
“And there’s something that he says to Dumbledore in this piece, which I adore and which is that I’m butchering it here, but we all make mistakes in life, but you can try and make things better. It’s the trying that counts. It’s the aspiring to make things better. Sometimes, in life, you go, ‘I’ve really screwed that up. I’m just gonna hide away in my hovel and put up that sort of exoskeleton.’ And I love that — actually the way he thinks it’s all about trying to make things better.”
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