Redmayne teases 'jaw-dropping secrets' of Fantastic Beasts sequel

Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore may be Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's favourite character in the Wizarding World she created.

But it is still Newt Scamander's story so far in The Crimes Of Grindelwald, the second of five films in the Fantastic Beasts fantasy film franchise.

Eddie Redmayne is back as the magizoologist who captured the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) at the end of the first movie, 2016's Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them.

In the sequel that opens here on Nov 15, we are still in the 1920s, and Grindelwald wants to create a new world order with purebloods ruling over the muggles.

Scamander is in London having completed his bestseller, but banned from travel by order of the Ministry of Magic.

This ban will only be lifted if he promises to hunt down Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), the Obscurial - a wizard whose powers are suppressed - who is still alive and searching for his identity.

Jude Law enters the fray as Dumbledore, Scamander's former professor who enlists him to defeat Grindelwald, who just happens to be Dumbledore's teenage friend-turned-nemesis.

The amazing thing about these films, because there are no books, is that we really don't know what is coming. Until we get that script, we have no idea. Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them star Eddie Redmayne

At our interview at the Palihouse Hotel in West Hollywood, Redmayne insisted he is clueless about the arc of the series.

The 36-year-old English actor said: "The amazing thing about these films, because there are no books, is that we really don't know what is coming.

"Until we get that script, we have no idea. And reading a script is like reading one of her books for the first time. The jaw-dropping moments of this film... I have had to repress the secrets for so long."

These are the secrets that the film-makers implore the audience not to reveal once they have seen The Crimes Of Grindelwald. In fact, there is even a hashtag online #ProtectTheSecrets.

Referring to the casting of Hollywood bigwigs Depp and Law, Redmayne said: "You do pinch yourself. Jude captures the gravitas of Dumbledore, but with a kind of twinkle. To capture an iconic character at one glance was pretty formidable."

He added of Depp: "He had that one day in the first film. I was one of the only actors to work with him because we finished shooting and he came in just to shoot his reveal when Colin (Farrell's Auror Percival Graves) turns into him.

"He went to his trailer as Johnny and then he emerged with his hair shaved blonde as Grindelwald and his eyes... that is who I saw.

"When he was on set, he couldn't have been more generous-spirited."

Rowling wrote the screenplays for both movies and will do so for the next three as well.

Redmayne was impressed by the fact that while she has full command over the universe she has conjured up, she was completely open to collaboration by the actors.

FORMIDABLE IMAGINATION

"For someone with such a formidable imagination, she kind of allows us the freedom to play. So there are moments where she will write something and you can just mess around," he said.

Potter fans will be glad to know the movie does go back to Hogwarts for a few scenes - there are even some Quidditch players seen briefly in the distance.

The Potter books were introduced to Redmayne by his younger brother when they first came out.

He recalled: "I loved them. And then when the films came out, there were two things.

"Firstly, it was filled to the brim with some of the greatest British actors in the world, people I have watched and admired, like Maggie Smith. But it was a place of warmth. I felt like every couple of years you could go and get a kind of hug from this wizarding world."

His favourite character was half-giant wizard Hagrid.

"I really loved him before I was cast as Newt, and it's like some sort of 'animal protecting' connection that we have."

Redmayne won the Best Actor Oscar for portraying English physicist Stephen Hawking - who died in March at the age of 76 - in 2014's The Theory Of Everything, and said his rising fame has been hard to get accustomed to.

"The honest truth is I feel incredibly lucky, and because I have a wonderful wife and two children, I don't take that for granted. But fame never gets usual," said the father of a two-year-old girl and eight-month-old boy.

"Three days after Luke was born, he had a sleepless night and so I had a sleepless night.

"I wake up at five in the morning to loads of e-mails saying that Stephen Hawking had died.

"And people from the British press were outside my door. I walked out of my flat in London because the doorbell had gone off, I was in my socks, and the next thing a newspaper was saying, 'Eddie Redmayne bereft after Stephen Hawking's death walking the streets of London shoeless'.

"Now I know that is what comes with the territory, but you never get used to it."

The writer is the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a non-profit organisation of entertainment journalists that also organises the annual Golden Globe Awards.