Olwen Fouéré Talks About Her Role as Melusine in “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald”

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald brings us to Paris and introduces us to the French Ministry. There, we meet Melusine, who is played by Irish actress Olwen Fouéré. In a recent interview, Fouéré shared details of her experience on set.

As it turns out, #ProtectTheSecrets doesn’t just apply to fans seeing Crimes of Grindelwald. Even some of the actors didn’t know the plot or characters, according to Fouéré. She revealed that she needed a code to access her script:

You get a code and go in and find the script. Your agent doesn’t even get to read the script. And you read your pages, only the pages that refer to you, and even in that coded script you don’t even have your actual character name.

In fact, it took until the costume fitting for Fouéré to learn her character’s name.

The movie may have been shrouded in mystery, but Fouéré had a great experience on set. She described director David Yates as “a lovely man, very personable, very easygoing and respectful, so you don’t feel like you’re on a big blockbuster set.”

She also got the chance to interact with several French crew members. Coming from a French family and being familiar with the crew’s hometown, Fouéré “was flitting between English and French on set” and felt the environment “was quite intimate.”

Fouéré’s part in Crimes of Grindelwald ended up being pretty small. She appeared in one scene with Eddie Redmayne (Newt Scamander) and Katherine Waterston (Tina Goldstein). However, Yates actually extended her role a little, suggesting that she might return for future Fantastic Beasts films:

I’m in literally just one tiny scene, which they then extended because David [Yates] said, and this is what gives me hope, he said, ‘She’s such a great character – we have to have her back’ and he added a bit extra to it.

And despite her appearance in the movie being relatively short, Fouéré still got the added benefit of earning “street cred with all [her] friends’ children.”

You can read the rest of Fouéré’s interview here, where she also discusses Irish theater and her feelings on the #MeToo movement.