Fantastic Beasts: First look at Ezra Miller's mysterious character

We’re finally getting a glimpse at the most mysterious lead character in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: the eerily named Credence Barebone.

Played by Ezra Miller (who was cast as The Flash in Justice League and made his DC Extended Universe debut as the character in this month’s Suicide Squad), Credence is the adopted middle child of Mary Lou Barebone (Samantha Morton). We’re told that he “appears withdrawn, extremely shy and far more vulnerable than his two sisters. Credence is defenseless against the abuse that comes in response to the slightest infraction of Mary Lou’s strict rules. But his loneliness also makes him susceptible to the manipulation of Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), who has taken a personal interest in Credence.” Graves is a powerful guy, an auror and the Director of Magical Security in the American wizarding government.

In the above first-look image, we see Credence and Graves together in an alley plastered with posters from New Salem Philanthropic Society — a radical organization led by Credence’s mother that wants to expose and kill wizards and witches by bringing about another Salem Witch Trials.

“Everything’s like CIA-level,” Miller said. “If I tell you sh– about my character, I swear there’s a sniper up on the roof that will take me out. They told me like two little bits of information about the character [when I auditioned] and I just went in and went crazy, and just talked as if I were this person, who I knew nothing about. But it was funny — there actually ended up being a lot of things like what I was imagining. But getting the role was a moment of absolute ecstatic joy and sort of transcendent sense of completion. I was doing some sort of slightly epileptic dance in the street of New York City, dropping to my knees, crying, praising the heavens, with people looking at me like I should be institutionalized.”

Fantastic Beasts is on the cover of EW’s Fall Movie Preview issue, which is out later this week. We’ll have plenty of addition Beasts scoop to come. In the meantime, check out some of our previous coverage, such as our deep-dive Q&A with star Eddie Redbayne. Follow @jameshibberd for more.