When 'Potterhead' Johnny Depp Agreed to Play Grindelwald Without Reading the Script
Johnny Depp has made an excellent comeback with his latest film Jeanne du Barry, a historical drama. The talented veteran actor is a known "Potterhead" and once jumped into the fantasy universe to play a dark twisted wizard - Gellert Grindelwald, in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Depp reportedly agreed to the "role of a lifetime" without even reading the scripts. He essayed his character in two installments in the movies Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
According to Fandomwire, Depp had earlier expressed his "soft spot" for the fantasy series, Harry Potter in an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2018. He stated that he watched the films with his children. “I read the books when my kids were smaller and watched the films with them. The books were superb.”
Depp revealed that he was "highly impressed with the series creator, J.K. Rowling," and continued, "What J.K. [Rowling] delivered is really a difficult thing to do as a writer — to create a whole new universe and a set of rules. And you pick it up in one fell swoop in the first book and first film. It’s a whole lot of information and I was amazed — you never felt like you were being slathered with exposition or being condescended to. It’s good literature and great writing in its own right. It ticks all the boxes. And I had a lot friends in the film, like Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) is a great friend. Richard Griffiths (Vernon Dursley) was a great friend, rest his soul. So I was pretty familiar with them and hugely impressed."
Calling his character, Gellert Grindelwald "oddly likable," Depp described in the interview why he enjoyed playing the character: "To me, there’s something almost childlike in Grindelwald. His dream is for the wizard world to stand tall and above. It’s a fascistic element, and there’s nothing more dangerous than somebody who is a dreamer with a specific vision that’s very strong and very dangerous and he can make it happen. I do believe Grindelwald is an oddly likable character."
However, Depp's flourishing role as Gellert Grindelwald in the spin-off Harry Potter franchise came to an abrupt end when he was forced to resign from the "Potterverse" due to allegations placed by his ex-wife Amber Heard. According to Vanity Fair, in November 2020, the Pirates of the Caribbean actor lost a high-profile libel case against the U.K. publication, The Sun. The Oscar-nominated actor had sued the news tabloid over a 2018 article in which he was called out as a “wife-beater.”
During the trial, The Sun's legal team had submitted 14 accounts of abuse against him. In the aftermath of losing the case, Depp posted a note explaining that he was asked to resign and that, “I have respected and agreed to that request." Depp was instantly replaced by Mads Mikkelsen. It was however reported that Depp was compensated with the full salary of an estimated $16 million for the third film.
