After the bittersweet conclusion to one of the most beloved cinematic and literary sagas of all time, 'Harry Potter', Warner decided to team up once more with author J.K. Rowling and begin penning the next chapter of the wizarding world's cinematic takeover. From there, 'Fantastic Beasts' was born, a story about a magizoologist that takes place decades before the birth of the boy who lived.
After the success of the first film in standing independently from the original saga whilst still entertaining and captivating its audience, the second instalment 'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald' was harshly criticised due to the excessive number of characters and interconnecting plots. Amongst all of this confusion, however, fans found light even in the darkest of times with our first glimpse of Jude Law as a young Dumbledore, which was undoubtedly the highlight of the second film.
Recently, the 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' actor has been given leave to discuss how he prepared to portray the legendary headmaster of Hogwarts, and it seems as though J.K. Rowling had a lot to do with it. "I think one of the most beautiful moments in preparation was working with J.K. Rowling. I spent an afternoon when she gave me the entire history of this great character", Law told Vanity Fair during the promotion tour for HBO's 'The New Pope'. "I remember she went in and she was having tea. She had these incredible heels on. She said: "OK, if you don't mind I'm going to stand up". And she stood up for nearly three hours and just walked up and down, talked, talked - and it just came out, it's just living in her".
Much like an alumnus of Hogwarts himself, Law hurried to jot down all of the notes he could. "And I'm sitting there scribbling down notes and getting all of this incredible insight into this character, which I had a little opportunity to use in ['The Crimes of Grindelwald'] and next year I go ahead and we do another chapter. There's more to come with that".
Developing Dumbledore
"The one thing that came out was the sense of play", Law revealed months earlier to EW. "He has a youthful mercurial approach to life, but that there's something that hangs heavy in his heart, in his past, that underlies all of that".
With this new approach to the character came one of the key decisions that Law made when constructing his vision of Dumbledore: whether or not he would base his interpretation of the character on what fans have previously seen from Richard Harris and Michael Gambon.
"I'm sure they were in the back of my mind, because I'd seen their work and admired both of them as actors, greatly. I talked with David Yates about that and we both decided that it wasn't necessary to do an impersonation of one of them as a younger man", explained Law. "This is a man with almost 100 years ahead of him before he became that character so we wanted to look at who he was in this moment and construct our own version". 'Fantastic Beasts 3' is set to hit cinemas on the 12th November 2021. Though little is known about this upcoming instalment, it is rumoured that it will introduce us to Castelobruxo, the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry based in Brazil.
