Seattle native Alison Sudol steals the show from award-winning actors in J.K. Rowling's screenwriting debut Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Fantastic Beasts follows the adventures of writer and "magizoologist" Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) in New York's secret community of witches and wizards. The story is set seventy years before Harry Potter and his friends will read Scamander's textbook at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Besides the many monsters and movie stars that make appearances onscreen, you're going to want to watch for these newcomers Sudol and Dan Fogler, both of whom shine onscreen as Queenie Goldstein and Jacob Kowalski, respectively. And lo and behold, Alison's one of us!
"I remember feeding ducks at Green Lake. I remember little walks in the woods. I remember the mountains, the sound. Pike Place Market I remember as a little girl. I love that. And I always go there kinda straightaway because it's really grounding for me."
Of course, in keeping with the tradition of the Harry Potter films, Fantastic Beasts also stars some of the best of British acting crop, including Eddie Redmayne and Colin Farrell.
"I have an atrocious imagination," admits Redmayne.
He says that for the first time in his experience, he was allowed to see CGI drawings and sets before shooting. Co-star Katherine Waterston says that the prop team made mock-ups too.
"It wasn't the final thing, but it was this disgusting, slimy, albino colored--like kind of gray," Waterston says. "Yeah, some of those things they built and they had puppeteers. And we had so much to help us. Yeah, to play with."
It was groundbreaking for actor Colin Farrell to join the Harry Potter craze, as Percival Graves, the Director of Magical Security.
"To be part of that world, to be part of that universe in any way, shape, or form, was a really cool thing," says Farrell. "Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah, it was cool. So much fun and when I heard J.K. Rowling had written her first screenplay, her first original screenplay, I thought, 'Oh, that's exciting.' And I read it and every page was just intoxicating and kind of transportive."
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is PG-13 and is out for digital download March 7th, 2017.
