When you meet Eddie Redmayne, he’s so affable and charming, so what you’d expect, that it’s almost shocking. Shocking in a, “Well, that’s no way he can be that nice,” kind of way. I had interviewed Redmayne once before, before he won an Oscar for playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, and a thing like that sometimes has a way of changing an actor. You know, maybe they have a little more, let’s say, bravado in their personal interactions. Nope: This is the same Eddie Redmayne: the guy who loves talking about his awkward auditions for movies he never got. (As we already learned from his audition for Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens).

Redmayne is a rare bird: Here’s an actor who seems much more comfortable talking about his failures than his successes. And we like his stories of awkward auditions because no one is sitting around thinking, Man, when is Eddie Redmayne going to catch a break? Case in point: He’s now the lead in a proposed series of five Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movies, which takes us back to the world of Harry Potter, only now in New York City, circa 1926.

Redmayne plays Newt Scamander, an awkward wizard who doesn’t much like socializing with people, who visits New York City in search of more magical beasts for his collection. Along the way, Newt gets mixed up in a whole host of rigmaroles (which are explained in more detail in our review) and finds himself very much the reluctant hero.

Ahead, Redmayne explains how he tried to differentiate Newt from Harry Potter. And, yes, he’s got some more awkward interview stories. (Oh, and Redmayne loves Hamilton, a show even he can’t get tickets for. And if an Oscar-winner still can’t get seats, well, that leaves little hope for the rest of us.)

I talked to you for Theory of Everything. You were nice. You have that reputation.

Oh, God. Disgusting. Like, beige.

Newt is definitely not the protagonist we’re used to in this world. He’s very quirky.

I think that’s definitely accurate. One of the things I found so attractive about the film when I read the script is that it didn’t feel actually heroic.

He’s just there looking for pets.

Exactly. He just wants some really cute creatures to hang out with – and he’s definitely better at hanging out with creatures than he is with human beings. What was amazing about the script was that J.K. Rowling had managed to weave a sort of thriller element to it and then this kind of darkness. But also, there’s this kind of buddy movie in the middle, as well as romance and the heart, that I’d loved in the Harry Potter films. And yet, weirdly, I found myself crying when I read the script – like when Dan’s [Fogler] character sort of went out in the world. And I couldn’t quite get over the fact that she’d managed to weave all these genres together in something that felt whole and complete.

It’s neat as a period piece, too. Like old New York…

It’s kind of amazing. I was so excited when I got the script and when I was cast that my wife and I would get to come to New York. And they were like, “We’re shooting in Watford, just outside of London.”

Oh, no.

But it was amazing, what they built. It felt like a different era in filmmaking. Because I’m used to doing films in which there’s an extra who like walks around the camera lots of times to make it look like there’s a crowd, and here there were just thousands of people dressed in period dress. And they properly built New York as far as you could see it. It’s quite overwhelming.

When you signed up did you know it would be five movies?

No. When you sign on, I think I was signed on for like three? I should actually know that. Four, I think was what I was signed on for. And then we found out when the world found out: When Jo announced it at the fan event. But the reality is that will only happen if people enjoy the film. And the other thing is what I loved about: I think sometimes with big franchise films, there’s a sense that that first film is like all set-up. It’s like a kind of pilot, and it can be unsatisfactory in that way. And what I loved about this film when I read it is even though there are references to past and kind of pointers to a future, it felt like a complete story.