Fantastic Beasts star Ezra Miller resists labels others put on him
US actor Ezra Miller on his unique personality
Ezra Miller is hungry.
After a long day of press interviews, he walks into ours at the Palihouse West Hollywood hotel, swipes a bowl of chips off the buffet, and wants to know if it's okay to eat through the interview.
Of course, he can do anything he likes as long as he gives us good copy.
Miller is always fun, with sometimes elliptical answers and strange segues which are interesting to unravel.
The 26-year-old US actor reprises his role as Credence Barebone, first introduced two years ago in the Harry Potter spin-off fantasy Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them.
In that film, he was revealed to be an Obscurial, a born wizard whose powers are suppressed, usually at a young age.
Credence was abused by his adoptive mother, causing him to become an Obscurus, a parasitical force deadly to its host, as a coping mechanism.
In Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald, the second instalment of five, which is showing in Singapore, the Ministry of Magic wants magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) to hunt down Credence - who is now searching for his identity - so they can kill him.
That's the only way the organisation will give Newt permission to travel and reunite with newly-reinstated Auror Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston).
Tina and Newt had promised to protect Credence at the end of the last movie, so Newt is faced with a hard choice.
With Credence as the catalyst, the various characters converge in Paris, where the villain Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) is marshalling his dark forces in the City of Light.
You must be very happy with your career right now.
Yeah, truly delighted, to be completely honest with you. I really, really enjoy all forms of artistic creation, in any medium and at any scale. I'll do a doodle with a Crayola just as soon as I'll work on some project of ridiculous scale and enjoy them just the same. It's creation, it's expression, it's interpretation and I find it infinitely delightful.
You have a unique personality. Has anyone ever tried to change you in Hollywood?
Yeah, the human mind seems to just desire simplicity in a labelling process. It's something that's wrong with our brains and it's something we have to resist.
We need to start practising resistance. Probably in the entire history of artists for as long as there has been art, there has been a process of being like, 'Guys, I did this thing' and then everyone being like 'Oh, you're the doer of that thing'.
We love when he does the thing, but if I want to do another thing, they're like 'Whoa buddy, you're the doer of that thing'. I think our desire to see the label before we see the human being is a massive bummer for everybody and seems like sort of the seed of the tree of death that we see growing above the whole earth now.
What was it like working with Johnny Depp?
I've heard of Johnny Depp. Weird guy, right? It was a very, very involved experience. These films are kind of knuckle push-ups on rough concrete the way that we engage with this material. It's like bloodletting, so Johnny was extremely engaged and committed. When I first met Johnny, I did not know it was him. I did not realise who he was until we were midway through the conversation.
Was he in character?
Yeah, he was in costume and in character and I just heard him referred to by his first name. Then I had this sort of incredibly engaged experience continuing this relationship. You know, it's fascinating because it's the continuation of the relationship that Colin (Farrell) and I played out in the first film.
What's the update on Barry Allen and The Flash spin-off movie?
Anyone who knows about Barry Allen, knows that he's often extraordinarily late. But when he shows up, it doesn't even matter that he was late because he fixes everything almost instantaneously. What you would recognise as instantaneously, is actually a long boring process for him that takes place over the course of a nano-second.
So that's the update. We're making it (laughs). It's going to be amazing. I am very excited about that. That's like one of my dream projects and I'll get to do it.
Fantastic Beasts actress amazed by surprises in script
As a big Harry Potter fan, Ezra Miller's biggest "geek-out" moment in the Fantastic Beasts franchise was the revelation of Claudia Kim as Nagini - what he calls the "crowning jewel" of the sequel.
The 33-year-old South Korean actress (left), who made her Hollywood debut as geneticist Helen Cho in 2015's Avengers: Age Of Ultron, portrays a Maledictus who carries a blood curse that will transform her into a snake permanently.
Potterheads will recognise the character as the infamous killing companion of powerful dark wizard Lord Voldemort.
In The Crimes Of Grindelwald, Nagini is the main attraction of a wizarding circus and freak show and eventually finds a friend and confidante in one of the menial workers there, Miller's Credence Barebone.
Was there a particular part of the script that had Kim geeking out?
She said: "For me, it was reading about Hogwarts. Of course, there were so many surprises in the script that just kept me thinking, 'Oh my God. Another one, and then another one?'
"I am scared of snakes. And (Nagini) was so scary in the films.
"So it was amazing to see she has so many different sides to her, and her story's only beginning."
She added: "What was so great was that for my audition, they didn't mention that she's meant to be this Maledictus or Nagini.
"It was just this scene about Credence, but also this other girl, who's beautiful and vulnerable, and she's just so broken. And yet she has this compassion and protectiveness. And that's what I saw in that scene."
Another highlight for Kim was experiencing the amazing fashion in the film designed by Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood.
She joked: "Lots of fantastic coats. They should call (the movie) Fantastic Coats And Where To Find Them."
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