Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts Round Up: Fiennes Possessive of Voldemort, Jared Harris Comments on Dumbledore Rumors, More

Dec 01, 2016

Posted by: Catherine

Fantastic Beasts, Fantastic Beasts Movie, Fiennes, Fiennes Interviews, HP Cast, Movies, News

A lot has been happening in the Harry Potter world this year, both with Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts adding to the Wizarding World. Looking forward, it is just going to get crazier with four more Fantastic Beasts films and Cursed Child coming to America. Jared Harris commented on fans calling for him to reprise his father’s role as (young) Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts. However, Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort) takes a look back at his role as the Wizarind World’s most dangerous wizard in a new interview, and Alison Sudol and Katherine Waterston take a look back at how they got pulled into the very beginning of Fantastic Beasts.

 

In a new interview with the Evening Standard, Ralph Fiennes talked about being controlling, though he doesn’t mean to be. He talked about a change in his career from playing evil characters to more comedic roles. After playing one of the most well-known cinematic baddies, he’s not to thrilled at the thought of returning to such characters soon. He did express being possessive over Voldemort, though. It seems he wouldn’t let anyone take that role from him to reprise it. The Evening Standard reported:

 

“Then three years ago, Wes Anderson cast him as a camp and moustached Monsieur Gustave H. in the sumptuous farce The Grand Budapest Hotel. ‘And people said: “He can be funny!”’ Fiennes says dryly, ‘and parts such as Laurence Laurentz in Hail, Caesar! and Harry Hawkes in A Bigger Splash were offered. Lovely parts.’ Which surprised Fiennes as much as anyone ‘because before that, I was not exactly bombarded with comedies’.

“The tempo change in his work is timely. Fiennes ‘didn’t much want to’ inhabit the mindless violence of his darker characters any more. ‘You have to go to weird places in your head and — well you can never say never — but after an SS commandant, a serial killer in Red Dragon and Voldemort [in Harry Potter], I decided I didn’t want to be that definition of evil any more. If you play those parts, I feel you have to put your head in the place of that person. And it f***s with your head.’ (After a bit, he concedes that if ‘Voldemort came round again, I would feel possessive… protective. I would like to not let that go.’) “

 

The incredibly lengthy and personal interview with Ralph Fiennes can be read in full here.

 

Turning from Harry Potter to Fantastic Beasts, the Evening Standard also spoke with Jared Harris about many Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts fans calling for him to play the role of younger Albus Dumbledore, following in his father’s (Richard Harris) footsteps as his father played the Potter film’s first on-screen Dumbledore. The Evening Standard wrote:

 

Jared Harris has spoken out about taking on the role of Albus Dumbledore in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Themsequel. 

“Fans have been calling for Harris to play the character ever since Harry Potter director David Yates and producer David Heyman confirmed that a younger version of the wizard will make his debut in the second film.

“Harris – whose late father Richard Harris played the wizard in the first two Harry Potter films – said he hasn’t been approached by film bosses, but believes they are ‘thinking about it’.

“Speaking to Standard Online he said: ‘They’re obviously thinking about it. I haven’t heard anything and I don’t expect to. It’s not up to me.’

“But the actor said he was sceptical about film bosses considering the pleas of fans.

“’Having seen [fan campaigns] before I find that [film bosses] don’t like to have their hands forced,” he said. “These campaigns almost always go in a different direction.’”

 

The article in full can be read here.

 

In a new video interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the two leading ladies of Fantastic Beasts, Alison Sudol (Queenie) and Katherine Waterston (Tina), talked about how they first got involved in the Wizarding World films. The women told Bazaar:

 

“When I first read the script, I just thought, this is a really wonderful story and I hope that I get to tell it,” says Katherine Waterston, star of the new Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. “We still don’t really know if we are in fact making a franchise. We’ll only make a franchise if people like the first one!”

“It’s amazing just to be a part of it,” says Sudol. “It’s as magical making it as it is watching it. It’s also a huge responsibility, because fans of the Harry Potter world are very loyal – they just love it so much – and so we just want to do the best job that we can.”

The video can be seen below:

 

 

 





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