Jessica Williams is a true force as Eulalie Hicks in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Her character was first introduced in film two, The Crimes of Grindelwald, but only via the briefest of cameos. In The Secrets of Dumbledore, however, she is an essential member of Albus Dumbledore’s (Jude Law) team and commands the screen in every single scene she’s in.
The Secrets of Dumbledore sees Mads Mikkelsen’s Gellert Grindelwald making moves to take over the Wizarding World. There’s only one way to stop him and it demands that Dumbledore put together a team with a wide variety of specialties and skills like Newt Scamander’s work as a Magizoologist and Williams’ Lally who is one of the best of the best when it comes to defensive magic.
One of Lally’s most striking qualities in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is that the moment she appears on screen, she’s absolutely oozing with an invigorating tenacity. That quality carries through the rest of the film, making Lally a character who’s especially easy to root for and believe in.
During our Collider Ladies Night interview about her career thus far and her experience joining the Wizarding World, I asked Williams where Lally’s strength and confidence come from. Here’s what she told me:
“I think Eulalie was born in Harlem to a non-magical family, a No-Maj. And later, as a young girl, she discovers that things would start to fly off the walls in the apartment that they were living in. She was really close with her grandmother and her grandmother told her that back in the day, there were signs that her great, great, great ancestors could practice magic. And so Lally, of course, gets accepted into Ilvermorny and she’s quite bookish. And I think Lally understands the state of the world in Harlem in the 1930s as a Black non-magical person, and also as a witch, because they kind of mirror each other in both worlds and Eulalie really threw herself in her studies. She was always very capable and bright, and Dumbledore was older, but I think in her school library at Ilvermorny, she discovered the work of Dumbledore, and so she’s quite precocious, and she wrote Dumbledore and Dumbledore wrote her back because she realized she was really bright, and they corresponded for a long time, and he’s sort of a mentor to her. Eulalie grew up to become a charms professor, and she wrote a book. She values education more than anything, and I think she’s a really good teacher at Ilvermorny. Her students really love her, and she’s really good at seeing people’s hearts. To me, that speaks of a confident, capable person and I know I always like to play women like that because those are the women that I know. And I think there was really no room for Eulalie to be unsure in this film the way that oftentimes a lot of women and people of color, they need to be sure to move through different spaces and I think Lally is a reflection of that, especially in this film.”
Looking for more from Williams on her journey from her earliest acting aspirations to scoring the role of Eulalie Hicks in Fantastic Beasts? Be sure to check out our uncut Collider Ladies Night interview in podcast form below which recaps her experience working on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, how she deals with challenging on-set experiences and loads more.