By Gill Pringle
An American actor (Balls Of Fury, Good Luck Chuck), voice-over artist (Kung Fu Panda, Horton Hears A Who!), filmmaker (2009’s Hysterical Psycho, 2014’s Don Peyote), playwright (The Elephant In The Room), comic book producer and graphic novelist (Moon Lake), stand-up comedian and musician, Brooklyn-born Dan Fogler is probably the last person that you’d expect to end up in the wizarding world of J.K. Rowling. But that’s exactly where he’s landed with Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, playing Jacob Kowalski, a No-Maj (what American wizards call those without magical powers) and friend to Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander, a wizard and field researcher in magical critters who becomes caught up in an adventure in 1920s New York.
Could you briefly talk about your character? “I play Jacob Kowalski, who is the first central muggle, No-Maj character in the wizarding world. I want to call him the Han Solo of the film…you know, Han wasn’t a Jedi, but anyway. He’s like the last guy back from WWI, and no one told him that it was over. He walked home all the way back to Brooklyn. He just wants to settle down and have a family, and open up a bakery, and that’s it. He gets swept up in this amazing magical adventure. He gets to play with the fairies and the witches in the woods for a day, and the experience is transformative. He realises that maybe his purpose lies in this world.”
Not only are you a muggle, but you’re one of the new Americans in this very British story. Did that feel strange? “Yeah, because it’s so British, but that’s what’s so delicious about it. One of the things that makes it so yummy, and so exciting, is that you get to see the universe expanded like that. This character really spoke to me, because I grew up in Brooklyn. I knew the streets that they had crafted and brought to life, and I could’ve been playing my great-grandfather. My great grandfather was a baker who worked on the Lower East Side – it was Fogler’s Famous Pumpernickel! I brought that to the audition. It was already in my plug, you know? I just felt very comfortable coming to the table, and I knew that it was going to be just as magical as Britain. I felt very comfortable stepping into it…I’ve actually always felt like I should’ve been born in the 20s.”
Why? “Whenever anyone asks when I would like to have lived, I always say The Roaring 20s. My favourite grandfather was one of twelve boys. There were a lot of boys, and a lot of them died young, because it was crazy times. I’ve always felt like one of those young guys’ souls jumped into me.”
What was the casting process like on the film? “I auditioned about a year ago, and I was like, ‘I nailed it!’ And then I didn’t hear a damn thing! Then very close to ComicCon last year, they were like, ‘We’re going to bring you out for screen tests.’ I met Eddie, and they were very, very good about it, but my agent said, ‘Just be prepared. They’re going to make you jump through hoops. There will be a lot of auditions, and at least a couple more screen tests.’ So that’s what I had in my head, and I went to Comic-Con, hocking my comic books, and just feeling very small. Then I got this call from my agent saying that I got the part, and that Comic-Con would be a lot different next year! Suddenly I heard the Superman theme in my head. My posture got a lot better. And a tear went down my eye. And suddenly I was handing out comic books, like, ‘Who wants comic books?!’”
How did you get into acting? “I knew that I wanted to entertain, and I knew that I could make people laugh. Then I was watching a movie one day when I was maybe ten or eleven, and it made me cry, and I thought, ‘Wow, I wonder if I can repeat that?’ I wondered how they did that a hundred times. The fascination of that made me really want to make people laugh and cry, and then I got into theatre in high school. Then I went to acting school in college, but I found out in high school basically that it was either this or nothing.”
Dan, as the first No-Maj central character, you’re kind of the audience’s way in, for the first time. How do you bring that to us, that feeling of being part of that world? What was it like for you to walk into that world, and not be the one with the wand? “I very much parallel Jacob’s awe with the spectacle, like me walking on set, and seeing [co-star] Jon Voight walking around, and seeing that they’ve reconstructed my home town back in the 1920s. I was like a kid in a candy store. I was in awe of this very magical spectacle in real life, and then that’s the same thing that Jacob is going through. He’s just a regular guy, experiencing something very much bigger than he is.”
Do you feel any pressure from the fan-base? “It’s like a massive wave that’s coming, and I think we’re all bracing for the G forces. Luckily, I’m a good swimmer. There are a lot of things to be nervous about, but it’s such a great foundation. It feels like we’re in good hands. For an actor, this is the best case scenario. I won the lottery.”
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is released in cinemas on November 17. Click through for our interviews with co-stars, Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterston.
