Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - A New Hero Featurette

Interesting facts and notes

Video interview with Fantastic Beasts screenwriter J K Rowling, 23 June 2016
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - A New Hero Featurette”

J K Rowling: My heroes are always people who feel themselves to be set apart, stigmatized or othered. That’s at the heart of most of what I write. It’s certainly at the heart of this movie. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was a textbook that Harry Potter used at school. While I was writing Potter, I became quite interested in Newt Scamander. So, I knew quite a lot about Newt. He’s been travelling the world studying magical creatures. He calls himself a Magizoologist.

[film clip of arrival]
Immigration official: “First trip to America?”
Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne): “Yes. (pause) ….must get that fixed.”

JKR: Newt’s creatures live in this magical case. You open it up. You can go down. It’s an amazing space.

[film clip of case and Newt’s hand waving]
Newt: “Hm-mm.”

Redmayne: Newt feels more at home with creatures than he does with human beings.

[film clip of Bowtruckle]
Newt: “C’mon, give me a smile.”

JKR: Newt walks into a society he doesn’t really understand.

[film clips]
Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston): “Mr Scamander, do you know anything about the wizarding community in America?”
Newt: “I know you have these rather backwards laws about relations with non-magic people. You’re not meant to befriend them. You can’t marry them…. which seems wildly absurd to me”
Goldstein: “Who wants to marry him?”

JKR: And then Jacob accidently opens Newt’s case of magical creatures.

[film clip]
Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler): “Hey! Mr English guy. I think your egg is hatching.”

JKR: So Newt gets embroiled in this adventure.

Redmayne: He starts to look a little bit more like a hero.

JKR: It’s something that has implications for the whole wizarding world.