Talk to Eddie Redmayne long enough and he just might share some Fantastic Beasts spoilers.
Last year, the Oscar winner scored the role of a lifetime as Newt Scamander in Warner Bros.' Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. "It's set in J.K. Rowling's wizarding world. It's set 70 years before Harry Potter, and it's about this English magizooligist who arrives in New York with a case full of these extraordinary magical creatures, and a couple get out," Redmayne said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Wednesday. "That kind of sets in motion a whole chain of events."
"When I read the script, I had no idea what to expect," he added. "It blew my mind."
After the successes of The Theory of Everything and The Danish Girl, Redmayne couldn't wait to start filming. "The amazing thing about J.K. Rowling is oftentimes when you read scripts, it's just the dialogue that you see. But when you read her script, it was like reading one of her books," he said. "The intricacy of the detail, it was like you were taken back to all those things that you kind of love in Potter films, but now in the world of New York in the jazz age, prohibition [era]."
Plot details have been kept secret ahead of the film's Nov. 18 release, which has created extra stress for Redmayne. "I'm useless at keeping secrets, so it's been a really stressful few months," he said. "But there are some great surprises—wonderful surprises that I'm very excited about."
Fantastic Beasts was originally intended to be a trilogy, but Warner Bros. recently upped it to a five-film franchise. Rowling's announcement came as a "complete shock" to the cast. "She always had a specific story she wanted to tell, which goes much further beyond just Newt and his case," Redmayne told Ellen DeGeneres. "But we didn't realize it was going to be five films."