David Yates Reveals How the Cast of “Fantastic Beasts” Was Built

In a new Pottermore interview, Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them director David Yates has revealed how the cast of upcoming Fantastic Beasts was built around one actor in particular.

It’s the first time we’ve heard anything from David Yates about the actual filming, and he says that when he read the script he was nervous about what he might find. Luckily, he was impressed – and why wouldn’t he be?

It’s a beautiful script; it’s really fun. It’s fresh. She’s got such a gift for creating adorable characters. These ones are special; they’re really moving and funny. You see bits of yourself in them, or you see people you know.

Yates also talks about the character of Newt Scamander a little more.

Newt is just fascinating. Probably anyone who’s ever done some sort of geeky thing will relate to him… And filmmaking is a geeky profession. Newt[ i]s obsessed with beasts and cataloguing facts about beasts. When I was a teenager growing up in the north of England, I was obsessed with lenses and cameras, so I really get that aspect of someone who’s truly obsessed with something. I get it.

He further expands a little on the other key characters:

And Tina! Oh, she’s so adorable because she’s sort of so career-obsessed. A lot of us who work really hard can sometimes relate to that. Jacob is everyman, or everywoman; he’s pure, and I like that. Queenie[ i]s glamourous and somehow worldly but innocent.

Yates also touched on the process of actually casting the actors, which sounds extremely time consuming, with the amount of effort gone into choosing the right actors for the roles.

It was like putting a rock band together. We saw so many people. We got Eddie; he was our anchor, and I knew once we’d got him, we had to build the world around him. The other characters in this world had to react to him; they had to have a chemical reaction with Eddie. So we went to New York and saw some really fine actors, a lot of them, over two or three days, one after the other in the same room, all of them with Eddie.

You can read the full interview here. And catch up with all the Fantastic Beasts news here, including the release of the trailer, which we’re sure you’ve already seen countless times!

What do you make of David’s insights in the characters and casting process? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!