Fantastic Beast And Where To Find It
The stars of this year’s indie hit Beast get under the skin of the disturbing thriller
IT’S A HOT July day in London. Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn, stars of this year’s acclaimed psychological-thriller Beast, are laughing and talking over each other warmly as the sun streams through the window. It’s a disturbing scene. After all, the last time we saw them together, when she was choking him to death down a dark country lane, her eyes turned black. And they couldn’t be further away from the tangled, raw, feral characters in Michael Pearce’s film — Flynn as murder-suspect Pascal, and Buckley as Moll, the woman who falls for him in the tiny Jersey town that keeps her small. As Buckley shows us a new tattoo inspired by Pascal’s Viking symbols in the film, the two of them help us to unpick the beasts within...
How did you react when you read the script for the first time? Buckley: I read 20 pages and was like,
“Fuck!” A reaction and relationship with the character, which was very visceral. It’s really rare that you have a feeling like that with a script; it doesn’t come along very often. I felt unnerved and involved and just wanted to be a part of it.
Flynn: I was sent the script and like Jessie just had a really strong reaction to it. Like this is a really important story and this is one person’s profound experience of life, laid out in a really beautiful vision.
Did Michael Pearce share his vision for how he wanted you to play Moll? Buckley:
Immediately when we met in the audition, it felt like we were working, excavating the potential of what wasn’t yet realised. From that first audition we were swapping notes. I’d just watched Blackfish, that documentary about the killer whale. It really reminded me of this and actually that’s how that opening monologue came about. Over a few months, before we started shooting, we kept musing and talking about film references and books and music and about the character. Then when we got to shoot we would just play.
What about when you guys first met?
Flynn: I think that’s a bashful moment for both of us because we probably both knew that this was a really cool thing. That for me was a good sign because there are a lot of people in our business who are swarming to those things wearing sunglasses…
Buckley: And I suppose at the heart of it was that these two characters are very vulnerable and very raw and so we have to allow that from each other and also test it for each other. And the whole crew as well. You have to show the ugliest, scariest part of you as a person, or the things that you think because of the story. Immediately from the script, it was so visual — it felt like it was coming from nature or something. There’s an energy in the script which was so human and elemental.
Flynn: The trust grew, it built. I had a two-week hiatus in the middle. And it was really hard, those first few days coming back because I had got to this cliff edge and then retreated. Then, I had to build it up again.
How did you prep for these characters? Buckley:
For me, I wanted to drench myself in her world and mindset as much as I could before I shot so then I could just let myself go. While shooting, l used lots of music to change dynamically what was required or what I felt would help me going into certain scenes. I like to do the bookie, heady space way, way, way before and forget about that once I get there. Always go back to the script because that’s the thing that’s going to feed your imagination most.
Flynn: I get obsessed by people that I know. I store memories of them and how they’ve behaved in certain situations. I’ve had friends who were quite odd. Some of them lost their minds at times. I grew up in a fishing village in Wales and there were really interesting characters. There’s always a handful of people that are fucking weird and interesting. You spend a lot of time thinking about them. I often pull together a mix of people and friends. I think, “I want to have that bit of that person, and that bit of that person.” And I listen to music quite a lot. Then at a certain point, you leave that behind. You want to trust your own interpretation rather than always going through a filter of the things that you’ve stored up to process. You want to just allow it to be.
I think the thing that I learned from the script and from filming and from Moll, from both these characters, is the seed of beastliness is inherent in all of us and we all have dark shadows. We all have different fucking wolves that are running alongside us all the time. Sometimes some are louder and sometimes some are repressed, and I suppose it’s dancing with those different things.
I want to talk about the ending. Did Moll kill Pascal to protect other women? Or because she’s become the beast? Jessie:
I think it’s both. Maybe initially, she thought she was killing the beast in the village, but by enacting the very [same] thing, she becomes the beast herself. Wherever she’s moving on to, she’s never going to be back where she was at the beginning… It’s refreshing, because very often you get given black and white. You get given the answer at the end, but humanity isn’t like that. People never really know which fucking winding road you’re going to go down and who you’re going to meet down there. Whether it’s going to be Little Red Riding Hood or the big bad wolf.
Flynn: This is a story for an age where people are realising that we aren’t good or bad. That we have the spectrum within us, and we have to keep working out who we are at every moment of our lives. The work is never done. I’m always keen to not make characters too pretty. It takes courage to make a character ugly or damaged or dangerous.
Michael’s from Jersey. Was there any concern about local people being offended? Buckley:
Yeah. Doing the screening on Jersey — he was really nervous about it. But they really embraced it. I think they just took the film on its own merit.
Were you surprised by the response to the film? Flynn:
I feel with this, I wasn’t making the film thinking, “It would really ruin it if people don’t like it,” because we had such a good time doing it. I thought that was enough, and then it was such a bonus to have people get the film.
Buckley: I think you’re always surprised. Especially because it’s a small independent. You’re in a little family bubble, just kind of clambering around together. I think I felt like we were doing something which was real, but you never know how that’s going to be received, and if that exists with just you guys. But I was just so thrilled for Michael because he’s had this in his head for seven years. I think he’s got a really unique vision and style and voice — something that’s really engaging and present and something that asks quite important and uncomfortable questions.
BEAST IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD