Director David Yates was finishing filmingFantastic Beasts and Where to Find Themwhen the images arrived in his email.
Much like Depp had done when crafting his takes on Willy Wonka and Capt.
“She said, ‘I can’t wait to see what you do with him.’
It was beautifully left as this open gift.”
So Depp sent photos of himself as Grindelwald to Yates.
His first-draft makeover was “slightly more extreme” than where Grindelwald ended up, the director recalls.
“I almost felt like he’s maybe two people,” Depp says.
“He’s twins in one body.
The dark wizard lookedsostrange.
Was he supposed to be comedic?
But that’s only the beginning.
Along the way, connections to Harry Potter and secrets are falling at your feet.
And there is one…” The Oscar winner pauses, knowing he’s treading into heavy spoiler territory.
“I got to the end and my jaw dropped.
There was one thing I didn’t see coming.”
“Darker” is a word the cast uses a lot.
“Complex” and “fast-paced” are others.
“It reminds me a lot ofThe Empire Strikes Back,” he says.
“The first movie is so positive.
It’s sweet and lovely.
But this time everybody is really put under fire.
People are gonna see this, like, a hundred times just to get everything.
They’re going to be going nuts that they have to wait for the next one.
And Jude Law, oh God, he’s perfect.”
One of the reasons Dumbledore trusts and likes Newt so much is Newt understands and forgives beasts and monsters.
Yet Newt, unlike young Potter, can quickly spot Dumbledore’s “for the greater good” manipulations.
“She’s more confident this time.
No one is questioning her intellect and instincts,” Waterston says.
Yet her character’s love life is a mess thanks to some long-distance-relationship misunderstandings.
While fans know Newt and Tina eventually end up together, the duo clearly have no idea.
That Theseus is engaged to Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz) Newt’s schoolboy crush complicates matters as well.
“If I find [the audition tape] I will destroy it!”
“David would give directions like ‘Can you do 2 percent more snake?'”
she says, laughing.
“Claudia Kim is a living god,” Miller declares.
“You’re about to get your head blown off.
Prepare yourselves for Nagini.
This is a tragic and beautiful story.”
“He’s trying to figure out who he is.
They’re two people who don’t really trust anyone who are learning trust for the first time.”
And guess which charismatic politician is surprisingly in favor of such unions?
“But wizards, he feels, should be on a pedestal.
This is very tantalizing to some.”
Could the nicest couple in this story, Jacob and Queenie, join Team Grindelwald?
He does very,verybad things."
And he does them with flair.
One of Depp’s improvisational additions was giving the wand-waving Grindelwald a conductor-like rhythm during a key sequence.
Indeed, the film’s title promises crimes.
Is Rowling making unintentionally or not some kind of modern political point?
Sudol certainly sees one.
“The film is terrifying that it’s so relevant,” she says.
“We really need to focus on trying to find commonalities amidst the instability of the world’s climate.
When a lot of crazy things are happening, it’s very easy to lose true north.”
Which brings us, quite appropriately, back to Newt, the story’s moral compass.
At one point in the movie, Newt tells his brother, “I don’t do sides.”
That’s almost a revolutionary stance in hyper-partisan times.
But it’s also one that, given the forces at play, is perhaps unsustainable.
“In this day and age, that’s very refreshing.”
A version of this story appears in the Oct. 19-26 issue ofEntertainment Weekly,available here.
