SnitchSeeker: You guys have the most heart-breaking scene at the end of the movie. Can you talk about how you filmed that the dynamic between the emotional scenes you did?
Dan Fogler: Oh wow. Yeah everything was kind of building up to that scene. That scene was very emotional. I thought it was very specific to me because it reminded me of ... you know, you try to find things in your life that you can equate it to and really make it real for yourself. It reminded me of when I went to sleep-away camp and I had a lot of my firsts. You find your motley crew and then your parents come and drag you away, and you don't want to go. I remember a few summers just blubbering my eyes out, and that's what that moment was for me - not wanting to leave the party.

So in the wizarding world, love is the greatest form of magic, and there's that kiss at the end. Is that the kiss that breaks the obliviation?
Dan: I like to think that is a combo of the bite and the streudel and the cocoa and the medicine and the magic creatures and then the kiss - like the combo helps him remember a little.

With this being an imaginary world and you not having everything in front of you all the time, was there a particular scene where that was a ton of fun for you guys or really hard?
Alison Sudol: It takes a lot of imagination, but that's a wonderful thing to tap into. The cooking scene was the first time that there was any sort of magic in the movie for us as actors - early on in the film we did that. I sort of assumed that someone would be telling me what was gonna happen, and then it got to about two days before and I suddenly realized that that was not the case and that I needed to know what I was cooking which meant I needed to have a recipe because, with doing magic it's not you go like, "Dinner."

You're casting all the different spells for everything to do the work, but you're still doing it. So I had to think, "How do you even make apple strudel? "What am I cooking?" "What's cutting what? And where does the potato go?" And then also we all had to coordinate that between us as a group so that we're not like in different scenes. It was really amazing as an exercise, like a ballet or something, for us all to really tune in to each other. We all really had to get on the same page visually. David [Yates] obviously was really brilliant at helping us get a feel for the scene, and we just all kind of connected in that moment in how we were going to do this from that moment on.
Dan: Yes. (laughs)

Even more so because you're meeting all these fantastic beasts for the first time, and you can't see them.
Dan: They do an incredible job of helping us see them. They have puppets. A lot of them were just elaborate faces on sticks with actors acting like them. But the erumpent had an actual body and he was a skeletal version of him, so he was lightweight - or she. And you had like a team of people inside this thing - it was like The Lion King - this giant thing, and they're all acting and making it live. And you go to acting school and they train you to imagine stuff, like give physics to stuff that isn't there.

(to Dan) Did you have a favorite scene or a hard one? What stood out to you?
Dan: Well, the scene where I open up the case and they all stampede out, and the murtlap jumps out, so I'm in that scene, working with this little squishy weird albino rabbit. It's squishy - they make it feel like it's moist - and I was like, "Where do I look? Where do I look? They're all coming out of the box? Where do I look?" And they're like, "No, no, no, you look wherever you want."

The technology is so caught up now they can just work it to how you look it. They'll paint it in later. That was so freeing, so I was like, "Oh my God." Then suddenly you're improvising and adding bits. It's like unheard of. There was a great bit that was added, which was one with the murtlap, He started to get me and then I noticed a smash down the street and I looked down then he looks at me and we look at each other. Ah I loved working that bit out. That was great.

With the director, what kind of notes did you get, if any?
Dan: We mostly got, "You guys are delicious. Keep doing what your doing."

Alison: Trust your instincts? I got actually a really amazing note from David right at the get go which I found so empowering because I'm, in real life, I don't necessarily do my nails all the time. And when I was doing all the screen tests and everything, I was always focusing on Queenie's empathy and her heart and her warmth and her love because those are all things that I felt. I had like crazy hair at the time. It was brown and all over my face and I was wearing like a weird onesie.

Then I got into the costume and the hair, the makeup and the nails and all of these very feminine clothes, and there was a tiny moment of a wobble for me at the very, very beginning where I felt like I needed to be more feminine than I was comfortable with - like was I being feminine enough in myself? So I lost my center a tiny bit right at the start and was being my idea of what a beautiful woman would ve. And he was just so great. He was like, "You don't need to do that. Just focus on the Queenie that you know. Focus on her. Focus on what you're doing. Trust your instincts. Trust your actual instincts. You don't need to be more than what you are." I think, as an actress, that was such a beautiful note. But also it was quite healing for me on a weirdly deep level of "just being is enough" I think, as women, sometimes we feel like we need to be more in order to be enough. It's liberating when you just realize, "No, just be yourself" That is livable and I carried that with me throughout the whole film.

Queenie is beautiful, and Jacob has the same reaction when he sees Queenie as a lot of men do, so what makes him different for her?
Alison: Well he's just a really good person. He's really kind. He's interested in what she has to say. There's just a sweetness to him. There's not a duality going on. He is a whole person. What you see coming forth is actually what he's thinking and feeling. There's like an innocence to him as well. And Queenie just sees all that. He's really brave as well. He's going on this adventure and he doesn't have a wand like we all do. He's just right there with them. There's just so much to love. He doesn't look at her like a thing. He looks at her like a human being - and she knows that because she can see what he's thinking.

Can you talk a little bit about the chemistry between you and Katherine. On set, did that click right away?
Alison: It did, yeah. It clicked in the screen test actually. When they were doing the screen test they had a lot of different actors paired up, adn they put us on a couch together and they said, "You two, you're sisters. Go." And we were like, "Hi, I'm Alison." "Hi, I'm Katherine. Well okay, here we go. We're sisters. Let's do it." She shifted the minute that the scene started. There was just this tremendous vulnerability in her face that she was trying to hide. It was so clear to me. I said something like, "I know you had a hard day. They just don't see you like I see you. It's gonna be okay."

And she looked like she was gonna cry and I didn't know how to comfort her, so I started to braid her hair. I don't have a sister, but it was such a natural moment. I have sisters in my life that I have chosen. It felt like that, but instantaneous. I wanted to take care of her, and I felt like she let down her guard and trusted me in that moment. It was a really special moment for both of us. In fact we both sent messages through our managers like, "I thought that was so beautiful. Thank you for going there with me." "Thank you for being so vulnerable and open." It just carried through throughout the rest of the movie. We didn't even have to work on it.

The first time you guys met J.K. Rowling, what was that like, and did you get nay extra information about your characters that you'd like to reveal?
Alison: Well the first time that Katherine and I met her, the four of us all stood around her in a semicircle. I was hopping from foot to foot. I couldn't say anything at all. When in doubt, don't talk. But she was really warm. She hugged us all. She said how excited she was, how happy she was with what we were doing. Trust your instincts - again that same message. And then the second time that she came to set, she told us about where our characters are going in the next installment.