Makers, Mysteries, Magic chapter 6, Alison Sudol talks about the bond between the quartet and Queenie's character development throughout the first two films
Alison Sudol: I think the friendship and the compaionship and the bond is so powerful, which is why when they are fragmented, it's problematic. When they are all those four together, when they are a gang, they can kind of do anything and when they are pulled apart, it's almost like all of the force that would be positive is sort of working in a chaotic way. It's not aligned and it just goes to show like these bonds in life with our actual friends are necessary to keep us to align with ourselves almost. When you are having rifts with people you love and things like that and that energy is almost like－if you imagine energy is a flow and when they are together, they are just like moving as a unit and when they are apart, everything is like "ahhh" and I think there's no way if that the four of them are all together that Queenie would've gone down the road that she is.
So in the first film, there was this real innocence and vulnerability and joy and excitement that she had because there was a adventure suddenly happening in her life. She was just delighted about that and then to have that adventure happening alongside meeting Jacob, for her it was just wonderful. It was really delicious exploring that.
This time around, basically because the wizarding world in America is very fearful of being found out. They are very fearful of the non-magical world. So there are really stringent laws about what kind of interaction you can have with No-Majs, which is basically nothing, like stay out of their way. So already in last film you see she's kind of breaking the rules by coming back to Jacob and then this time around, you see that they've been in a relationship for a while. It's caused a huge rift with her sister and because she has this gift and she's been seeing into people's heads for so long and has never fallen in love with the way that she falls in love with Jacob, I think she's got a little bit of desperation not to lose that and because she's got the added thing of you can't have this, it pushes her to make perhaps not the wisest of choices, which we've all done in love. She just so deeply and desperately wants love and when Tina can't accept that and Tina's her only family, it means that everything is kind of on Jacob and so she's sort of going to have Jacob, whether Jacob likes it or not. It doesn't work very well unsurprisingly and then that sets her off on a journey alone to go and find Tina. She just gets really lost and It's kind of heartbreaking and yet as a woman that's a bit older than she is in real life, I can see that she's going on a necessary path towards wisdom, towards learning more about herself and towards being a more integrated woman, but it's not gonna be all peaches and cream and fun.
It's not so lovely for Queenie in this film. She has trouble because, you know, she doesn't speak French. She's not good at languages period. She has trouble with Newt's accent, you know, so forget about Paris. So she's kind of getting a lot of information that she can't filter through in the way that she does. She's like clogged up by all of these information that she can't process, which is also part of the reason why it's easy for Grindelwald to manipulate her, because her instincts are not functioning properly.
So she is scooped up by Grindelwald in easily the most vulnerable moment that she's had in her adult life. She has very little at this point left to go to, so she's not protected by anything in that moment and he comes in and you know, it's very interesting the way that Jo's done this. Basically, you know, you think of a predator or a evil person, a bad person's gonna come in and they are gonna be like vulgar and horrible and being like killing kittens in front of you and you are gonna be able to see that they are evil, but the thing about Grindelwald is that he's a master manipulator. He's all things to everyone that they need, you know, and that is why he is so dangerous and to Queenie, he very quickly understands that the way to get to her is through her giant heart, which is very open and very sore and he comes in, he's vulnerable to her and sort of appeals to her and also reacts to her gift, which is a gift of being able to read minds, but Queenie's never been told that it's a gift. She's always been shushed, you know, and It's always been a frustration and an annoyance to the people around her and here you have this very intriguing mysterious man who sees her as this powerful woman and also he's saying, you know, I want what you want. I want you be able to love freely.
