Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection (2)
Mads Mikkelsen says it’s entirely possible Johnny Depp could return to his Fantastic Beasts role after his latest legal outcome.
Depp, 59, last played Harry Potter villain Gellert Grindelwald in 2018’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald but exited the role in November 2020 amid legal woes involving his ex-wife Amber Heard’s assault allegations, which he has denied. At the time, he lost a UK libel lawsuit against newspaper The Sun for calling him a “wife-beater.”
On June 1, Depp won his separate defamation lawsuit against Heard, 36, in Virginia over a 2018 Washington Post op-ed she wrote about domestic violence, though she didn’t mention him by name. She won one of her defamation countersuit claims as well. They are both appealing the verdicts.
Mikkelsen, 56, was cast to take over the role of Grindelwald in the third movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledorewhich debuted in theaters this past April.
With the recent legal outcome, Mikkelsen suggested the door might be open for Depp to reclaim the role in a potential sequel.
“Obviously, well, now the course has changed — he won the suit, the court [case] — so let’s see if he comes back. He might. I’m a big fan of Johnny,” he told Deadline. “I think he’s an amazing actor, I think he did a fantastic job. Having said that, I could not copy it. There’s there was no way I could just copy it, because it’s so much him. It would be creative suicide. So we had to come up with something else, something that was mine, and build a bridge between him and me.”
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Daniele Venturelli/WireImage; Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Mads Mikkelsen; Johnny Depp
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“It was intimidating. His fans were very, very sweet, but they were also very stubborn. I didn’t interact too much with them, but I could understand why they had their hearts broken,” added Mikkelsen.
The Secrets of Dumbledore had the lowest opening weekend box office for any Harry Potter movie to date. A sequel has not been officially green-lighted yet, though writer JK Rowling previously expressed that she intended on the movie franchise having five total installments.
In April, Mikkelsen told The Hollywood Reporter why Grindelwald’s drastic change in appearance was not directly addressed in the sequel: “That was very deliberate. Everybody knows why [the actors changed]. The entire world knows why. It would almost be like an Easter egg to reality to point out we swapped actors. Hopefully we drag them in with the first scene and from there they accept this world.”
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He added that he would have liked to discuss taking over the role with Depp. “I wasn’t like, ‘Oh please let me talk to him.’ It would have been great to touch bases, ‘clean the room’ in a sense . Maybe I’ll see him in the future,” said Mikkelsen.
When they spoke out about the outcome of their contentious six-week trial on June 1, Depp said he felt like the jury “gave me my life back,” while Heard said the verdict was a “setback” for women who speak out.
Said Depp at the time, “My decision to pursue this case, knowing very well the height of the legal hurdles that I would be facing and the inevitable, worldwide spectacle into my life, was only made after considerable thought. From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome. Speaking the truth was something that I owed to my children and to all those who have remained steadfast in their support of me. I feel at peace knowing I have finally accomplished that.”
“The best is yet to come and a new chapter has finally begun,” he added.