You’re very specific with color choices for the costumes your characters wear, and have sometimes struggled to find a shade that will photograph in the right way. How did you end up with the specific shade for Newt Scamander’s blue coat, which he wears throughout the film?
Colleen Atwood: The thing is, a lot of [Scamander’s] creatures had sort of luminescent color, and I wanted him to have a sense of being one with them, but not standing out, like he’s in some neon outfit in the middle of the street. I came to this blue with a lot of green in it, and it has a little bit of brown undertones. It’s an interesting blue because in different light, it photographs differently. I didn’t want it to pop too much, and I played with it a little bit.

It was a wool that I had in my sock, actually, that I dyed to get the color that I wanted, so it was a process to get the color right. Taking more yellow in, putting more yellow out. Little tweaks with it, but I finally got to a point to show it to the Davids—that would be [director] David Yates and [producer] David Heyman. Eddie [Redmayne] and I were all over it, we loved it, but we were like, “Well, I guess we’d better show it to them, because it’s a big commitment.

At first, they were like, “Whoa. It’s kind of a blue-themed coat.” I was like, “Yeah, but if you put it around black and navy and the colored coats—the grays and all the colors around it—it’s still going to work okay. It’s not going to be the only thing you see in the frame.” That was how it evolved and how it became what it is.

We played with the shape of it a lot, that coat, because Eddie squats down on his case a lot—does a lot of up and down movement—and he has a sideways gait to him that he evolved for Newt. It’s almost like an animal walk, in a way. I really wanted something that served him, too, and we did a lot of rehearsals with it to make sure it all worked for him, with his acting.

Having worked closely with Johnny Depp on a long list of films—including this one—how would you describe your relationship with him?
Atwood: I just love Johnny. I’ve known him since Edward Scissorhands—he was very young when I met him. So was I, I guess. [Laughs] I think because a lot of our work’s been with Tim [Burton], because we have that longevity, we have almost like a strange, family relationship. He’s such a magical and graceful performer, Johnny, that in the fitting, I always give him a lot of little things that are part of the costume, because he always notices them. Because he notices them, he uses them, and it’s a really special thing to me as a costume designer, when an actor actually says, “Oh, wow. That pocket’s great. I can do this with it,” and they kind of discover their character as you’re discovering your costume. Johnny’s always been one of those people—it’s a comfort for both of us.

Colin Farrell was a presence in his costume. He was a big presence so I gave him what I called the “Joan Crawford shoulders.” I did big shoulders and a more elegant sweep of the coat, almost like at 18th century great coat. I thought it gave him authority and that’s what I was going for with his character and his look. While there’s authority there’s also a slightly sinister undertone with the darker colors and a slightly wizardy quality to it.

On Ezra Miller’s costume … I wanted it to feel like he was ready to burst out of the costume, like his character was ready to mutate into this other being, this other entity. So I wanted his costume almost like a shell that held him together in the costume.