SnitchSeeker: In the DVD extras, J.K. Rowling said, “Katherine’s my girl,” regarding you nailing Tina’s audition in terms of getting her vulnerabilities and insecurities perfectly. How did you get into Tina’s mindset, starting off, and how do you think that evolved from the first audition going into the final cut of the movie?
Katherine Waterston: Well, the funny thing is, connecting to a character is a mystery. Sometimes they just make sense to you right away. It’s always a testament to the quality of the writing. But sometimes the writing doesn't say enough and you just don’t feel like you know the person, or you just don’t feel like you have a sense of how to play it. It’s such a dumb thing to say about it, but it is a magical experience. It’s part of the great joy of being an actor.

Sometimes you feel this kinship, and you can’t explain why, really. It’s just a thing that happens. It often happens for parts you don’t get to play, which is a horrible torture because you feel this incredible connection and then you don’t get to pursue that connection. It’s like unrequited love when you get the part. But when you do it’s obviously such a gift because you find yourself working and it doesn’t feel like work.

I know that Tina was very important to Jo [Rowling] and, like Hermione, I think there’s lots of Jo – or versions of younger Jo – in Tina, as well. If I had known that at the time, I think I would’ve been very nervous. But I didn’t know that at the time, and I saw some of younger me in Tina, too. There’s something in the film. She’s very much dealing with an internal struggle and I think she’s on the precipice of some big shift, but it hasn’t quite happened yet. But she’s ready for it to happen. I’ve related to that quite a lot.

And then, in terms of the final cut, you know, once I leave set, they finish the film. A movie is never an actor’s film, it’s always the director’s film. So there’s this amazing surrender you have to do. You provide all of your work and then they make it into what they think the audiences will enjoy most. There is this piece of the collaborative process that suddenly you are no longer a part of. So, there is an element of surprise for every actor when they do the final film, in a way, because we just offer our services.

In a sense, making Fantastic Beasts was like doing theater because these films – because of the action sequences and the big sets and the extras and everything – it takes six months to make these films. We really got to live with the character for a long time. Some films, they take two or three weeks to make, or something, you’re really moving quickly and you don’t have a big budget. It can sometimes feel like right when you get to know the character, you have to stop playing them.

It’s hard for me to quantify how the character developed as I worked, but it certainly felt like I had real time to spend with her and I think it would have been really sad to say goodbye to her at the end, even though I was going to get to come back.

SnitchSeeker: What kind of relationship do you think Tina had with Graves as Grindelwald and how do you think that compared with what her relationship was like with the actual Graves?
Katherine: To be seen, I think. She doesn’t know that Graves is Grindelwald. It’s revealed at the end. But she doesn’t interact with him at all at that point.

SnitchSeeker: How do you think Tina reacted when she found out that her boss was actually the big bad villain?
Katherine: You know, it’s a strange thing because she’s the one that, along with Newt, begins to suspect him. It’s a point in the film where the action just takes over and things are moving very quickly after Tina and Newt’s arrest. But when Graves sentences them to death, there’s a shift. There’s this suspicion that maybe they were harboring is suddenly confirmed. Of course, at that time, they don’t know that he’s Grindelwald, but they know that he’s very dangerous.

I think she has such great instincts – that suspicion had increased basically since the middle of the film, but there was just way too much chaos at the time to deal with it. I think it’s quite a shocking view.

SnitchSeeker: Did you actually get to work with Johnny Depp the day he was there?
Katherine: The way that they shot it, I knew – obviously after reading the script – that Colin was going to change into somebody else, and that other person was going to be Grindelwald. I knew that. But I didn’t know it was going to be Johnny Depp. They shot that a day I wasn’t there. So, I never saw the man, sadly. I have a feeling he’s going to be back.

Snitchseeker: So, J.K. Rowling published the screenplay. The final scene with Jacob’s bakery, in the script, it says it takes place three months later. Where do you think Tina went off in those three months?
Katherine: Well, in the goodbye scene with Newt she says, “I wouldn’t be back on the investigative team if it wasn’t for you,” which gives you the feeling that there was some interaction that happened between Picquery and Newt where he explained why I was sufficient and all the good things I had done along the way – essentially put in a good word for me at the end of the film. And so, I imagine she’s doing what she loves best, which is working. She’s back on the team.

SnitchSeeker: We interviewed David Yates last week and he said that Tina actually went off abroad during those months.
Katherine: Well, I don’t know the timeline of the next film, but I did know that I do some traveling at some point. But I didn’t know it was within those three months.

SnitchSeeker: We were surprised, too.
Katherine: I’m telling you, actors, we’re always the last to know! I have a feeling she’s not on a vacation though.

SnitchSeeker: Do you think Tina might have suspected that Credence actually survived the entire train incident, given that she cared so much about him? What do you think happened to Credence at the end?
Katherine: Well, I actually suppose that this is the way the film becomes what it’s going to be in post-production because we did shoot that ending in a couple of different ways.

If memory serves, we did one version where I did know that it was him. Sometimes those kinds of discoveries are really fun to just shoot on the day, but when you’re finally cutting together the film they might – especially in something where the characters will return when the story continues – sometimes it’s more fun for the characters to know less so that there’s stuff to discover in the future.

I would have to ask David Yates really what he thinks there, but my feeling from having seen the final film that she doesn’t yet know there. The way they cut it, it seems that I don’t know.

SnitchSeeker: In the department store, there was a scene that may have been shot with the Demiguise having a premonition of several Newt and Tina “futures.” Did you ever film that?
Katherine: Right, because the Demiguise can predict what you’re going to do before you do it. So you have to do things that are unpredictable in order to try to confuse the Demiguise and then maybe catch it.

So, in that process, we split ourselves into all these different sorts of copies of what might happen next in a very particular moment in our lives and it was meant to sort of dizzy the Demiguise.

But something very emotional and intense is going on so basically in the real scene between the real Newt and Tina he’s confessing something painful and she goes to comfort him and then when we split into all of the possible future Newts and Tinas we did one where he walked away. Or one where we laughed about it. Or it kind of turned into something romantic.

So we moved around the department store and we shot all of these different versions and then they put them all there together. It was probably just way too much of me and Newt’s faces for anyone to look at. But it was really fun to shoot. I thought, “How is he going to put those together?” I think, ultimately, they just didn’t feel that that was the moment they needed us to bond more. They put that off a few more minutes in the film. But yeah, it was fun to shoot.

SnitchSeeker: Can you talk about the dinner scene in the girls’ apartment - the juxtaposition between Jacob and Queenie openly talking with each other, but then Newt and Tina are quietly giving each other looks – and what they were trying to express, or not express, with those looks? What was your mentality in filming that with Eddie?
Katherine: On some level, it’s such an intimate question I’m not sure if I can answer it. I think what you see there are two characters who are confronted with their own social limitations. That the areas in their lives where they really thrive. If he’s with his animals, he’s confident and he knows just what to do.

And although we don’t really see her thriving at work in this film, at work – that’s the place where the world makes sense to her. It’s what she’s poured all of her energy into in her life. In a sense, by mistake they’ve missed out on developing the parts of themselves that would allow them to just simply enjoy a dinner. I think in that moment they’re both confronted with their own inadequacies and their shyness, so they’re recognizing something similar in one another, but also totally too limited to do anything about the fact that they’re realizing that they’re similar.

Then it’s almost made more embarrassing by the fact that the two people right next to them have no difficulty in this area. But, I think that the whole quartet tells a story of oddballs coming together and feel understood by one another. The same thing is happening for both couples in that moment. The ones that are having an easy time talking are finding that they have things in common and a connection, and the ones that are struggling are also finding a connection in that moment.

SnitchSeeker: Do you think it’s an aid or a hindrance that you know where Newt and Tina end up? Does that make a difference in the way you’re portraying the characters throughout the series?
Katherine: You know, I have to not know that. Of course, I, Katherine, know that. But Tina doesn’t know that. So the audience has an advantage over the characters. I think that’s a fun place to be. The audience knows more about us than we know about ourselves. I find that really enjoyable. Also, it allows us to learn and to take our time with it, and not just tie it up in a box in two hours. I think it’s going to be a real journey there. It’s really fun to just work through it. I enjoy it. Eddie would say the same thing – we don’t know that they’re going to end up together. And who knows how long it’ll take.