Daniel Radcliffe "can see why people are frustrated" over Johnny Depp’s casting in ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’.
The 54-year-old actor has reprised his role as Gellert Grindelwald in the sequel, but some fans slammed bosses’ decision to bring him back for the next movie because of his controversial divorce from Amber Heard in 2016, in which she claimed he’d been abusive towards her throughout their marriage before later dropping the allegations, and begged them to re-cast the part.
However, although the producers did consider recasting the villain, they later decided against it because the allegations had been dropped – but Radcliffe can see why fans are annoyed by it.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the 28-year-old actor said: "It’s a very hard thing for me. The ‘Fantastic Beasts’ producers are the ones who gave me a great start in life and an amazing job.
"I can see why people are frustrated with the response that they were given from that … I’m not saying anything that anybody hasn’t already said — and this is a weird analogy to draw — [but] in the NFL, there are lots of players arrested for smoking weed and there is other people’s behaviour that goes way beyond that and it’s tolerated because they’re very famous players. I suppose the thing I was struck by was, we did have a guy who was reprimanded for weed on the [original ‘Potter’] film, essentially, so obviously what Johnny has been accused of is much greater than that."
Meanwhile, following on from the end of the first film, the sequel sees the Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald escape from the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA).
Now the wizard is gathering followers to raise pure-blood wizards up to rule over all non-magical beings but, in order to stop him and his plans, a young Albus Dumbledore [Jude Law] enlists the help of Magizoologist Newt Scamander [Redmayne] who agrees to help, unaware of the dangers that lie ahead.
Daniel Radcliffe ‘can see why people are frustrated’ over Johnny Depp’s Fantastic Beasts casting
