Wen | Yang Zhou
Editor| Zhang Hui
Figure | network
The final step in "Little Freckles" Eddie Redmaine's transformation into magical zoologist Newt Scamander is a coat. Wearing it, Eddie entered the wizarding world of the 1920s.
It was a blue tweed coat with a retro slender silhouette and hidden pockets for potions and magical creatures. Daniel Radcliffe, who has been playing Harry Potter for 10 years, saw Eddie's appearance in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and said indignantly, "I've been wearing jeans and a pullover jacket for 10 years, why did you have such a great coat when you came up?"
As a Muggle who plays a wizard, there are always items that allow actors to get into the scene quickly — whether it's a retro coat, a low-key suitcase, or a magic wand. For those obsessed with the wizarding world, the best bridge between reality and the wizarding world is a series of films adapted from J.K. Rowling's work, such as the upcoming Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Crimes of Grindelwald
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The creative team behind Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is still the "standard" of the Harry Potter era.
For many years after harry potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, producer David felt that life was lost and empty.
He hopes to return to the wizarding world created by J.K. Rowling with everyone. But the reality is that with the "cut" of director David Yates in 2010, the crew officially disbanded. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint have grown up from harry, hermione, and Ron jr., and the children and big buddies in the crew have gone through important stages in their lives: completing a-levels, taking a driver's license, some getting married and having children, and some passing away. More critically, J.K. Rowling announced that she would not continue to write Harry Potter, and the magic passage of platform 9 and 3/4 was closed.
In early 2013, David and Lionel Wigram, executive producer of the last four harry potter films, got together and re-watched eight Harry Potter films and felt that there was something to be tapped into J. K. Rowling's world.
As a result, Rowling's foreshadowing in 2001 became the prototype of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them series: "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" is a must-have biology book for everyone at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the author of this book, Newt Scamander, an English magician who searches and studies magical animals around the world, first appeared in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Leonard felt that perhaps the wizarding world could be continued from Newt.
When the two approach Rowling with new ideas, Rowling immediately describes to them a sequence of stories belonging to Newt Scamander— his story takes place 70 years before the Harry Potter series, in New York in 1926, when the division between the magician and the mak (the American name for non-magical humans) has reached its peak, and the entire Ministry of Magic is in an atmosphere of unprecedented tension. To David Hyman's surprise, J.K. Rowling, speaking of a seemingly inadvertent stroke from 15 years ago, relentlessly exhibited another magical society, as if the story had already existed in her mind.
"That's one of the reasons her work is so popular. When she wrote the name Newt Scamander 15 years ago, she had already figured out what kind of person he was and what the history behind him was." David Heyman wrote in a later memoirs article.
The creators' ideas for the new film were immediately agreed, and even the actor who played Newt was very clear: he looked like a man living in 1926, he was supposed to be a native Britishman who looked smart and funny, but at the same time had infinite compassion — all of which pointed to the British actor Eddie Redmayne, born in 1982 (Chinese audiences affectionately called him "little freckles" because of the freckles on his cheeks). He has the typical shy appearance of the British and represents the orthodox education of the United Kingdom - graduated from Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge University, and previously won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Hawking in The Theory of Everything. More importantly, he is a complete "ha fan". The wand connecting the wizarding world was passed through David, Leonard Weigram, and J.K. Rowling to Eddie Redmayne.
Although the second film in the series has been filmed, mentioning the process of bonding with "Newt", Eddie, sitting on the couch, shyly hangs his head and rubs his hands, telling the "People" reporter about the scene with director David Yates about the script:
The two met that day at a historic bar in London's Soho, and Eddie arrived from another crew with a suitcase in his hand. It was a tan suitcase that had been with him for 8 years, and "my dad always carried a briefcase to work. I wanted to find a way to make myself feel like an actor was a serious job, so I bought this box. Every time I go to the set, I carry it, and it contains my script and other paraphernalia." Eddie explains.
After entering the bar, David Yates told him about the script project of Fantastic Beasts: it was a film written by J. K. Rowling, the male protagonist was named Newt Scamander, and he had a suitcase containing many magical animals... Hearing this, Eddie's first reaction was to push the suitcase at his feet to the back, and he laughed and said, "I don't want to look so prepared."
Making a face in the Harry Potter films is the dream of many British actors. Regardless of the size of the character, hero or villain, having a place in Rowling's wizarding world is enough to be a lifelong glory for a British actor. Before the release of the last Harry Potter film, Vanity Fair magazine in the United States counted 76 well-known British actors who had not starred in Harry Potter, and listed them on its website like a list of "bad students", including Hugh Grant, Kayla Knightley, "Bean" Rovin Atkinson, "Roll" Benedict Cumberbatch, etc. "Watson" Martin Freeman once said in an interview on the show: "We are like the 'Orphans of the Mist' in Dickens's novels. Harry Potter."
Not participating in the Harry Potter series even became a "meme" among British actors. During the roadshow of the film The King's Speech, Colin Feith, the "face uncle" who played King George VI, and Helena Carter, who played his wife, participated in an interview after the London test screening. After Helena Carter finished filming Harry Potter and The King's Speech at the same time, she looked proudly at the "Uncle Face" next to her, who showed a depressed face.
Eddie auditioned for junior Voldemort Tom Riddle 16 years ago, and later his Cambridge classmate Christian Coulson got the role. Because of his long red hair, he always felt that he naturally had the conditions to play a member of the Weasley family, but these ideas did not come true. When he finally got the role of Newt, Eddie developed a sense of relief that his dream had shone into reality, "Harry Potter [in our hearts] has some kind of mysterious status." Eddie told People that when he was at home, he used to tell Harry Potter to his two-year-old daughter, Iris, and that "British actors read Harry Potter stories to their children like some kind of bond in their relationship."
Along with Eddie came to China, the actor Ezra Miller, who plays Credence in the film. When he was interviewed in his room, reporters sitting outside the door could hear his loud laughter. Although he was an American, he grew up obsessed with Harry Potter and auditioned without a script. Towards the end of the first film, he met Rowling on the set for the first time and felt "very unreal". He used exaggerated expressions and movements to explain the significance of the magical world to him: "Myths and imaginations make me really open my heart and remember who I am and where my true abilities are."
The four lead actors took enthusiastic photos with Chinese film fans
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But when you really enter the wizarding world and act, everything is not so interesting. Catherine Waterston, the heroine of the Fantastic Beasts series, helplessly told the People reporter that whenever people asked her about the interesting story of the shooting, she felt a little bored. Because on set, they saw neither magical animals nor wonderful magic in front of them, "You see a ten-legged monster, but what I see is three people in a monster's clothes." 」 Every time she plays with Eddie, she has to control herself not to laugh out loud, because the animals in the movie that use huge wings or arms to hold Eddie up are a strong and tough man on the scene, holding Eddie back and forth with dedication.
Catherine said that in the real world of magic, the actors are most vulnerable to injuries, which is to wave their wands and wave their arms. "It's like a tennis elbow... We'd say, 'Oh my God, I'm getting a wand elbow again!'" 」
While everything on set reminds the actors that the wizarding world isn't real, it doesn't hide the excitement the actors feel when they have a wand of their own. Eddie called it "the most exciting moment of the job," and he chose the simplest one from the sketches of the wand provided by the props team, made of organic materials with a simple mother-of-pearl on top. He felt that Newt was a humble and unassuming man, so the wand should be like that, "like a craftsman cutting it out at once."
Eddie on set
Not only that, but in order to make himself look professional when waving his wand, Eddie also asked a coach to train himself in the gesture of waving the wand. In the film, he places his wand on the ground so that it shows the animals; he listens to the animals with his wand, and then recovers them one by one. In the interview, every time Eddie mentioned the magical images in these movies, Eddie was excited, "The effect presented by the film is even more real than you think!" 」 Jude Lowe, who played the young version of Professor Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, went to Picasso's documentaries to learn how he stroked his brushes when drawing, and even wanted to learn some real magic. But to his disappointment, none of these things worked. He once complained in an interview: "As soon as I got there they said to me, 'We have cgi effects.'" 」
In contrast, Eddie's preparation before filming has more room to play. He studied wilderness survival with a coach, and he wanted to know how the zoologist Newt tracked animals in the jungle and how he interacted with them. He not only learned to walk in a duck palm style, but also learned to tickle the anteater, just like Newt in the movie teased the money fan "sniff". He wanted to get as close as possible to Newt, who had lived in the wilderness for a year, and even left an anteater a scar on his wrist, "It's like sniffing the wounds of a fight with me, and each wound leaves a little history."
Sniff
Eddie's two-year-old daughter likes to fiddle with Newt's wand, but Eddie is always worried that she will poke her in the eye. Eddie would occasionally perform "magical scenes" from movies for his daughter, such as the audience's beloved interaction between Newt and Little Sniff, but without the blessing of special effects, his daughter was always confused and even dozed off.
When he took on the role, Eddie offered to talk to J. K. Rowling for an hour. After meeting Rowling, he skipped the greeting and got straight to the point: Come, tell me about Newt, what is his family and background? When Eddie played Hawking in "The Theory of Everything" and Lilielbe, the transgender man in "The Danish Girl", the historical data was there waiting for him to examine, but when it came to the role of Newt, all he could do was exhaust the world in Rowling's mind, the magical world related to Newt.
"Newt came from a part of her heart." Eddie said.
People who restore the wizarding world through the movie rejoin. J.K. Rowling occasionally came to the set to visit the class and was surrounded by actors to ask about the details of the wizarding world; former employees had children, and they were also taken to the set, playing on the trams of the 1920s, waving their wands; director David Yates's 8-year-old son was even filmed in a small clip in the movie, when he happened to be reading Harry Potter, and he was thrilled.
After the release of the first part of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", a netizen wrote his feelings on Douban: "You are 21 years old, ten years have passed since you turned 11, and even 17 years ago." You think you've grown up, but you haven't. The 21-year-old sat in the 3dimax hall watching "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", and the familiar theme song sounded, and there was no difference between you and the 6-year-old when you watched "The Philosopher's Stone" for the first time in the dilapidated cinema hall in Tianjin."
A month before the film's release, in front of St. Paul's Church in London, nine giant wands from the films Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them stood in the square. Whenever night falls, the 9 wands shine with the holy light of St. Paul's Church. Fans who come to the pilgrimage from all over the world also hold their own wands in their hands. Perhaps only people who truly believe in the wizarding world can feel that power, as Eddie puts it, "Life inevitably rises and falls, and when you are in a low point, it will be very important if you can find some comfort in a magical world that is parallel to the real world and full of imagination." 」
✨ A benefit ✨
Have you ever imagined yourself as a wizard? What kind of crazy brain holes have you opened about the wizarding world? Feel free to tell your story in your comments. On November 16, the day of the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Crimes of Grindelwald, we will sample the 10 readers with the highest number of likes, and each of them will give away a limited souvenir of the movie "Fantastic Beasts Are There".
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