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Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Warner Bros. Pictures)

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In the first two movies from the franchise, the Fantastic Beasts prequels focused on new characters like Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), but in the third film from the series, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, brings the beloved wizard from J.K. Rowling’s original books to the forefront. Jude Law, who returns to the role as Dumbledore, talks about how he imagined the character after the performances by Michael Gambon and the late Richard Harris. “It’s not really a process of change, it’s a process of regression,” Law explains, “One of the joys that David allowed me to investigate was rather than feeling the weight of their brilliant performances, you understand that this Dumbledore is not the fully-formed person from the books. He’s confronting and resolving his demons, and that’s what I mean by regression. He’s facing the past, he’s facing himself and his own guilt. But if there is a quality that links them together, it’s his mischievousness, his humor, and his belief in people. He sees the good, or at least the potential good, in people.” 

Despite the fact that the performances by Gambon and Harris established Dumbledore so definitively, Law had no qualms about stepping into the role. “It was kind of a no-brainer. Would you like to play Albus Dumbledore? Yes, I would!” Law further explains, “I feel like I was in subconscious preparation for it ever since I read the books to my children, and there’s so much in the character to mine and investigate as an actor, that’s just as a human. Then you get into the extraordinary world of magic. I remember Eddie telling me in my first film that if there’s a situation or a problem with a scene, remember that you have magic at your disposal.” 

Taking on the role allowed Law the opportunity to give additional shading to the character, while still enjoying the pleasures of the Harry Potter universe. “The major lure was to go back and filling aps and explore themes and insights in the character that were hinted in the books and the films,” Law says. “I will use any excuse to watch them over and over again. It’s research — I’m studying! But it was important to free ourselves from the Dumbledore we knew because he wasn’t quite that man yet, and yet there were definite qualities that Richard and Michael gave him that I wanted to steal: the humor, the relish of life, and the impish behavior.” 

The main conflict in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is between Dumbledore and the villain of the series, Gellert Grindenwald (Mads Mikkelsen, taking over the role from Johnny Depp). Law and Mikkelsen tried to fill in the back story of the relationship between the two men and how it developed. As Law explains, “A lot of it was just sharing our imagined take on how they met and what that meant to him. I imagined that being Dumbledore was actually quite lonely. He was brilliant and outstanding at a very young age, to the point where he probably felt isolated so that he diminished his sense of power and ambition. Suddenly he meets someone who matches him and inspires him, and that kind of connection is very powerful, particularly when you’re young. It’s important to remember that their time together would be cherished and dynamic and special, but then there’s this awful kind of moment when you realize that you’re moving away from one another, but it doesn’t take away from the initial spark, in fact it makes it harder.” Law relates it back to his own life and his own choices. “It felt fortuitous to play the character at the age I am now, because I got to reflect twenty-five years back and the mistakes I’ve made, and how I sit with those.” 

Despite the increased prominence of Dumbledore on this film, the focus of the series remains on Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander, although the relationship between the two characters is a main focus of the film. “I love the Dumbledore relationship,” he says, “It has almost a fraternal quality, like an older brother and a younger brother, and there’s a moment in the film where he sees the vulnerability in Dumbledore and passes on a moment of wisdom to him. Fundamentally, Newt is an introverted guy who is most comfortable with his creatures in his own world, but Dumbledore has seen a quality in him and a potential for leadership in an unconventional way. What I love about this film is it’s like a heist movie where this group of outsiders band together, and there’s a wonder in that. Jude was a friend before we started working together, and one of the real joys of working on a series of films is you get to feel so comfortable working with each other that you push boundaries.” 

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is the third in the series, with five planned in total, but even though Redmayne has been there since the beginning, he has yet to learn the full arc of his character. “We are given the script, so we know the whole story for each movie,” he explains, “but as far as the arc of the series, it’s really one at a time. Occasionally we get snippets of what’s coming up and a lot of whispers and rumors about where we’d be going.” He credits longtime director David Yates, who has helmed all of the Fantastic Beasts movies and the last several Harry Potter films, for keeping the franchise on track. “One of the amazing things about David is that even though the script is there, and it’s a huge technical feat, he would allow us as actors to improvise and come up with new ideas and modulate. Actors often do that on film sets, but you can say what if the creatures did this, then play with that. That was the most fun, and with some of the actors here, they’re brilliant at improvising and I’m useless at it, but watching Dan Fogler and Jessica Williams improvise and add extra layers really was wonderful.” 

As with the first two movies, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore gives Redmayne a chance for some inspired physical comedy, in this case a sequence in which he has to charm crab-like creatures by walking like them. “It all stems from the mating dance from the first movie, and clearly something in that tickled David and Jo and Steve Kloves, and in each film there’s something written so that Eddie can make a tool of himself in a scene,” Redmayne jokes. “But we took it very seriously, and we looked at wildlife programs and there are probably some very embarrassing outtakes of me sending videos of some intense dance things. Eventually we came up with me just wiggling and putting my hands in the air. It was less a marriage, and more a car crash of ridiculousness.”

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