Carmen Ejogo Wields Her Wand in Fantastic Beasts Interview

Fantastic Beasts actress Carmen Ejogo talks to Pottermore about her character’s personality and what her wand says about it.

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“The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter.” So said Ollivander, the most sought-after wandmaker in Britain, upon his first meeting with Harry in Sorcerer’s Stone. This sentiment isn’t exclusive to Britain or even the magical community, it seems. Fantastic Beasts actress Carmen Ejogo may only play at her role as a witch, but she feels a powerful connection to her wand nonetheless.

“It is so beautiful! I am so in love with my wand,” Ejogo told Pottermore. “Maybe subconsciously I willed the designers to give me the one with the big gem on it.”

Coupled with the fact that Pottermore went on to describe Ejogo’s wand as “purple,” it sounds like she scored the most fabulous one of the bunch. This is fitting, as Ejogo portrays Seraphina Picquery, president of the Magical Congress of the United States (MACUSA), in the upcoming film.

We don’t have much more information on Seraphina than we do on her wand. Pottermore calls the character “charismatic, formidable, [and] influential,” but mum’s the word on further details. Ejogo certainly commands the screen in the Fantastic Beasts trailers, with her stunning costumes and general air of grandeur. Judging by these glimpses of her, Seraphina doesn’t seem like a character to tango with if you don’t know your steps.

We know that wands say more about their wizard than they may let on (see J.K. Rowling’s writings on Pottermore). This may help us to peel away Seraphina’s layers to get to the core of her character. Seraphina’s wand is a force to be reckoned with in her hands. Ejogo explained:

"“I don’t think that [Seraphina] is ostentatious in any way, but I do think she is commanding and she knows the power that she yields. That wand represents that power. You can tell that something epic will happen when it’s used. Seraphina’s kind of like that. She’s epic.”"

Ejogo wasn’t the only cast member impressed by her wand. She said of costar Ezra Miller, “He was quite taken aback by mine because he recognized it was made by a very different wandmaker than he was accustomed to.”

As an avid Potterhead himself, Miller was likely expecting something more Ollivander-esque. But Fantastic Beasts takes place in New York, not the UK. American witches and wizards frequent other wandmakers’ shops. According to Pottermore’s History of Magic in North America, New Orleans witch Violetta Beauvais made Seraphina’s wand. Beauvais fashioned her wands from swamp mayhaw wood, using for their cores hair of the rougarou (a dog-headed monster native to Louisiana swamps). These wands apparently had a penchant for Dark Magic, but it was said that many heroes wielded Beauvais wands as well.

Hmmm… Could the Beauvais wands’ questionable history hint at the mysterious Seraphina’s nature? Is she one of the aforementioned heroes? Or did her wand cast a bit of Dark Magic? Ejogo perhaps unintentionally teased this possibility. She told Pottermore that “[t]here’s going to be something very, very powerful coming out of that wand when it’s needed. The wrath of Seraphina is yet to emerge from it.”

Next: New Hi-Res Images from Fantastic Beasts

Power and wrath might not be such bad things when you’re dealing with the likes of the Swooping Evil. But something tells me that there’s more to Seraphina than her title as MACUSA president. We’ll find out this November.

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