Katherine Waterston Talks 1920s Wizarding America In Fantastic Beasts

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them star Katherine Waterston discusses the differences between the wizarding and No-Maj worlds in the 1920s.

Since J.K. Rowling announced the new Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie trilogy, mum has been the word on the finer details. Less than two months from the release, Harry Potter fans still don’t know much about the extension of our beloved world. According to the official synopsis, we have a general feel for what’s going down. Expelled Hogwarts student and magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) heads to New York with a case full of magical creatures. Those creatures feel like a bit of sightseeing and break free from their confines. Scamander and his ragtag group of pals go after them, all the while with the American wizarding government hot on their heels.

Other than that, eager viewers have seen a few little beasties, a handful of new characters, and a little bit of chaos in the streets of 1920s New York. The rest, it seems, will have to wait until the first film’s release on November 18. In the meantime, we’ve had a few cast interviews to tide us over. They don’t reveal much in the way of plot, but they have been able to give us a little insight into their characters and the world.

Recently, Collider caught up with one of those actors, Katherine Waterston, to talk about the film. Waterston plays one of Scamander’s aforementioned pals (and his eventual wife), Porpentina “Tina” Goldstein. Waterston indulged reporters and fans alike with some hints about her character, who she seems to know quite well.

Image via Warner Bros.

Waterson explained what it was like to know that her decisions about Tina would influence merchandise and fan response. She chose Tina’s wand and outfit, which turns out to be a bigger deal than even she initially considered.

"“[S]ome of it has to do with practical needs and then specific little weird ideas you have about the character that nobody else ever knows about—and that all of those decisions were ultimately going to maybe wind up on a doll or something. It seems so weird. It’s kind of a wild thing because they’re so personal to me. Those decisions and which wand I picked, and it’s really almost an entirely private matter. There were things about one wand I was attracted to over another, I never talked to anybody about. You know, I didn’t talk to David [Yates] about it or anything. It just was like, yeah, this makes more sense for Tina but you know, then that’s going to go into some kind of mass production.”"

These details don’t tell us much about Tina herself. But they do suggest that Waterston has quite a firm hold on the character, which should make for an outstanding performance. It seems that we’re in for another of Rowling’s well-developed female characters. However, Waterston wants Potter fans to know that that’s where the resemblances to other characters end. Hermione Granger has made an impact on audiences, and Tina will do the same, but in her own right:

"“It never occurred to me to compare myself to [Hermione] just because we’re both female, in any way. You know, they’re totally different characters and I don’t feel like I’m stepping into her shoes simply because I’m a woman.”"

Well-put, Ms. Waterston. It would be nothing short of a shame if the Fantastic Beasts characters were little more than cardboard cutouts of the Golden Trio. We’ve already seen Harry, Ron, and Hermione in action. It’s time to turn our attentions to Newt, Tina, Queenie, and Jacob.

While the characters are different, there do seem to be similarities in the worlds in which they live. Harry Potter was set in 1990s United Kingdom, whereas Fantastic Beasts takes place about seventy years prior and across the pond in 1920s America. But wizarding ideologies seem to be universal. They don’t appear to differ amongst themselves so much as they differ from the Muggle and No-Maj (non-magical) world. Waterston said of the matter:

"“I feel like there’s the period the film is set in but then there’s also a lot of sort of magical permission a little bit in the world we’re creating. It doesn’t seem to be divided by race or sex in ways that the world was in the twenties or in the way America was in the twenties. We have a female president. Is that a secret? There are different rules than our world.”"

The president to whom Waterston refers is that of the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA). At the time of Fantastic Beasts, the president is Seraphina Picquery, played in the film by Carmen Ejogo. As a woman of color, Ejogo’s role as MACUSA president does jive with Waterston’s claims that American wizarding society doesn’t hold the same prejudices as the No-Maj community. J.K. Rowling has made similar claims of the wider wizarding world before.

Still, it doesn’t seem feasible that sexism and racism don’t exist in the wizarding world. That’s not to say that it should—bigotry shouldn’t exist in any world. But there’s no sense denying the fact. If anything, denial makes that bigotry more dangerous: If it doesn’t exist, then we don’t need to do anything about it. Thus, denial supports the mentality that there is no need for progress.

Image via Warner Bros.

Of course, the magical community’s lack of such prejudices allows audiences to experience Ejogo’s talent in a prominent role. Therein lies the silver lining. But the general theme is problematic nonetheless. The idea that sexism and racism don’t exist in any world should not be perpetuated. America has made strides since the twenties, but we still have a long way to go to improve socially as a country. It seems that such sentiments are being ignored in the Potterverse because Rowling and her team don’t want to deal with them.

To each their own, I suppose, but it’s nonsensical at best. As underground as wizarding society may be, you’d think the non-magical community would have some impact on it. Especially when we consider that not all witches and wizards are purebloods, who might have less contact with the No-Maj world. Half-bloods and those born to non-magical parents would certainly have a place in No-Maj society, and would likely bring those customs and ideologies over into the magical one.

Image via Entertainment Weekly

The worlds do indeed collide. Harry Potter was evidence enough of that, although the original series was just as bereft of sexism and racism as Fantastic Beasts. The classist war takes center stage, but the series fails to examine how other prejudices play into that by claiming that wizards don’t have other prejudices at all. We can’t pretend that these issues are irrelevant. The wizarding and No-Maj worlds aren’t so distanced that one wouldn’t affect the other. We see in Harry Potter how the magical wars impacted Muggle life. Likewise, the Fantastic Beasts trailer depicts much No-Maj confusion and panic in the wake of these rampaging magical creatures. If the wizarding world can affect the non-magical one, it seems that it would work vice-versa.

Alas, that is not the case. Wonderful as it is to imagine a world in which such prejudices are moot, creating a fictional one removes the opportunity to discuss these real-life issues. The magical issue of blood purity is a classist one, but it cannot take the place of sexism and racism as well.

As Waterston states, there are different rules at play in the magical world. But those who inhabit that world—however magical—are still human, and as subject to human folly as their No-Maj counterparts.

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Perhaps we’ll see this come into play more should President Picquery be forced to tango with the No-Maj government. While the wizarding world may pay no mind to her sex or race, the American government certainly will. We’ll see how it goes down when Fantastic Beasts hits theaters in November. For now, we can only continue to dissect and speculate.