Fantastic Beasts 3's stars have been reflecting on the bond between Dumbledore and Grindelwald ahead of the movie's release.
During the global press conference for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Jude Law and Mads Mikkelsen spoke about their "imagined take" on how the characters met and what that meant to them.
Law, who plays a young Dumbledore in the Harry Potter spin-off film series, said it was always "really important" to think of who Albus [Dumbledore] was before he met Gellert [Grindelwald].
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"I always imagined that being Dumbledore was actually [in] quite a lonely place being — that he was brilliant and outstanding at a very young age, to the point where he probably felt slightly isolated or someone who was maybe diminishing his own sense of power and self and scope and ambition."
Law continued: "Then suddenly, he meets someone who is as brilliant and matches him and inspires him and that kind of connection is very, very, very powerful. More so when you're at a young age.
The actor added it was important to also remember what their time together would have been like, suggesting it was "incredibly dynamic, incredibly cherished and special".
"And then, this awful moment where you realise you're on a different path, you're actually moving away from each other, but that doesn't necessarily take away from the explosive kernel, the firework that went off initially. In fact, it makes it harder."
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Mikkelsen, who plays Grindelwald, added that he and Law had "quite a few conversations" about what that relationship looked like.
"We wanted this to be real. Magic we take for granted, it's been with us since we were born, we can't be wearing the fanboy hat and going, 'Oh my God, this is magic', right? So we wanted that relationship to be real, real people, real situation, real disappointment with each other," he explained.
"Nobody in history has actually started out saying, 'I'm gonna be the bad guy', right? So we have to figure out what [Grindelwald's] mission is, what's his goal? Why is he trying to make the world a better place?
"I think that they started out having a common and a mutual goal as young adults, and then it got blurry. The ways of getting to that goal were different than they imagined," Mikkelsen concluded.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is released in UK cinemas on April 8 and in US cinemas on April 15.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
