Fantastic Beasts: Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston tease Newt, Tina relationship

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Published on October 30, 2016 12:00PM EDT

It’s Harry Potter canon that the characters played by Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterston in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them — Newt Scamander and Porpentina “Tina” Goldstein — eventually end up married in J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world. But when the pair meet in the upcoming film, it isn’t exactly love at first sight.

Redmayne and Waterston were on hand Sunday to preview new Fantastic Beasts footage and discuss the film at EW PopFest, where they teased the how the relationship between their characters begins on screen.

“One of the things I loved about this script when I first read it is, I think J.K. Rowling had always seen it as telling a larger story, but the film is it’s own thing,” Redmayne said. “And actually the relationships that you see arrive in the film, they stand together as one sort of whole piece. But what I love is the relationship starts kind of –“

“Combative,” Waterston chimed in.

“It’s not love at first sight, put it that way — maybe there’s a bit of chemistry at first sight, but it’s quite combative,” Redmayne continued. “But what was lovely was to play a slow build, to be able to play this kind of — these characters are thrown into a world, this quartet together [Newt, Tina, her sister Queenie, and No-Maj Jacob Kowalski]. They’re all outsiders in some ways, and yet they have really heroic qualities within them. So it’s kind of lovely for us to not rush that and be able to play it slow.”