Katherine Waterston thought she bombed her Fantastic Beasts audition

Katherine Waterston, who’ll be playing Porpoentina “Tina” Goldstein in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, talks about what the role means to her.

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Katherine Waterston is one of several actors who will soon be carrying the Harry Potter franchise on her shoulders. She’ll be playing Tina Goldstein, an ex-Auror demoted to a desk job after using unauthorized magic, in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Smart and determined, Tina sounds somewhat like Hermione. That’s a comparison Waterston draws in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. “There are people who have really high expectations for what we’re doing,” she says. “I have to not think about that so that I can be free and play around every day and not feel like I have to get it right. You want to be loose.”

Waterston also talked about how she landed the job. At first, she wasn’t confident, particularly after her audition.

"Well, the casting director had just eaten a lot of cake, and he said, “I’m sorry, I just ate a lot of cake,” and then he had like indigestion during my audition, and he didn’t seem to be watching me. So I thought, “Oh, I’m boring him.”"

Nevertheless, Waterson received a call back from the producers at Warner Bros. She soon grew attached to the role. “There’s kind of no rhyme or reason to what is appealing to any given actor,” she said. “It just is or it isn’t. It’s kind of like dating. You either connect to someone or you don’t. You can’t really say why. I just loved Tina and felt a connection to her.”

Predictably, Waterston didn’t reveal any specifics about the plot. She did, however, admit that her favorite beast was Picket the Bowtruckle, although her tastes are known to shift. Still, it doesn’t sound like she loves any of the creatures as much as Eddie Redmayne (Newt Scamander). “It’s so beautiful to watch him,” she said. “He’s worked out all these different dynamics with all the different beasts.”

The producers allowed Waterston to have a hand in designing Tina’s wand, which delighted her. “Usually on films, you get used to kind of being told, ‘This is what you’re going to wear, this is what you’re going to hold, and remember, you’re lucky to be here, and shut up.’ And this is like: “What do you think? What is Tina’s wand?” And I’m like, “Oh my God.”

"There’s this whole deal with the wands in the Harry Potter world that they choose you, so it was so great to be a part of that. What wand would choose Tina? And there were all these different kinds, and they would tell different stories. If a really ornate wand chooses you, does that make you think you’re going to have this incredible future? Are you going to become a really important witch? Or if you have a really basic wand, is that going to make you think, “Oh, I’m not going to achieve greatness?” So that was a really fun part of it. At that point, I was so far into it, it was so obvious what wand would be right for me."

Waterston doesn’t describe Tina’s wand in detail, but does admit that she asked it be made heavier. “It just didn’t feel powerful enough.” Sounds promising.

Next: Wizard's Council: What did we think of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be in theaters on November 18.