While Donald Trump was winning votes in the U.S. on Tuesday night, Eddie Redmayne and his Fantastic Beasts crew were taking refuge inside a giant suitcase on Canadian soil.
With smoke billowing from the top and a critter’s fingers creeping out, the Goliath luggage installation at Yonge-Dundas Square houses props from the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in theatres November 18. It’s open to the public today (November 9) until 9 pm.
Hundreds of fans waited outside in the rain on Tuesday night to catch a glimpse of Redmayne and his co-stars Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol and Ezra Miller. They were kicking off the suitcase experience and talking J.K. Rowling’s screenwriting debut Fantastic Beasts, which spins a back-story that begins more than half-a-century before Harry met Voldemort. This is the first film from the Potter-verse that isn’t based on a book.
Redmayne plays Newt Scamander, a wizard who arrives in 1926 New York with a magical briefcase housing those titular beasts he collected from across the globe. A mishap unleashes the beasts and threatens to expose the hidden wizarding community in an intense political landscape that reflects the current fear of immigration. Fantastic Beasts was made with Donald Trump’s nationalistic and xenophobic rhetoric in mind.
“This movie is all about fear of the other and acceptance,” says Sudol, observing a conversation Rowling can continue to have well beyond this first Fantastic Beasts movie.
The writer recently announced that this spinoff is the first in a five-film series, which could take five years to ten years to complete. Trump will be president for at least another four. That’s something the cast didn’t yet know, but were certainly wary of on the red carpet.
“I’m hoping we’ll be moving in the right direction,” Redmayne offers as an optimistic outlook on the future.
“I’m living here with you in Canada,” says Fogler, not long before our immigration website started to crash.
Fantastic Beasts opens on November 18.
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