Last month, a conversation J. K. Rowling had with Stephen Fry about Fantastic Beasts was aired on the BBC. Our good friends at The Rowling Library posted those parts of the program in which Rowling shared her thoughts about two mythological creatures, about two of her own imaginative inventions, and to say repeatedly that this subject is important to her because, in it, one can learn “why we write stories,” even “what it means to be human.”

It is easy to overlook this conversation and its importance for grasping Rowling’s beliefs about writing and about the essence of “being human;” I certainly did when I first watched the video above and posted it here without comment as something of a filler. Today I have written out the transcript (and please check whether it is accurate; does she say the Lethifolds scare the “bejeebers” out of her or the “bejeesus”?) and shared three thoughts after the jump as annotations. Enjoy!

I think about this a lot — that we’re story-telling creatures — because to our knowledge we are the only animal that does this. And obviously it was an attempt, certainly with respect to myth and folklore, it was an attempt to explain the natural world, things that people didn’t understand.

I am very interested in story, inevitably. I am not just interested in writing stories but I am interested in why we write stories.

I’m even more fascinated by the fact that discreet cultures that had never met created such similar archetypes and such similar creatures. So we see the fire-bird, the Phoenix as I called it, but you see the version of a fire-bird throughout different cultures.

And what is that telling us about what it means to be human,  what lives in the back of our minds in our subconscious? We often see this, magical beasts, that magical beasts have been imagined by, after all, people who are living among different real animals. We’re talking about cultures across different continents That fascinates me because that’s telling us clearly about ourselves …

Mermaids… it’s very interesting because where did that myth come from? Even in Africa, these inland countries of course have great rivers, there is a form of mermaid, the jengu, so again this is something that has been created across these different cultures. Why were British sailors imagining fish-tailed women when people in Africa were imagining fish-tailed women? It’s just extraordinary….

I think it would be exceptionally difficult [to create a fantastic beast without any model in nature]. I created a creature in the original Fantastic Beasts, the Lethifold, Now that was my worst nightmare. There I went for something that would scare the bejeesus out of me. Although I was taking the idea from a cloak, when I stood back and looked at what I’d invented, well, that’s just a manta ray. [Fry: ‘Manta’ means ‘cloak’…] Exactly, so I’ve invented the manta ray who doesn’t live in water….

The Niffler is a bit of a favorite of mine. It’s a treasure seeker, likes everything that glitters, so it can locate treasure for you. So, for those of you who don’t know, the Niffler is a curious creature who is, I don’t know, a cross between a magpie in nature and a duck-billed platypus in appearance – and a mole, exactly. They used a platypus to get the snout-like appearance in the movie which I adore, I mean, they ran these things past me and I just loved it, It gave it such an endearing appearance…

So it’s exceptional difficult to invent something and often nature got there far better. Because you look at some of nature’s extraordinary creations and you think “CGI will never match this.”…

I was thinking about the creatures because I knew we were going to sit down and talk about this. And I realized that half those books [the Harry Potter novels] fold without those magical creatures. They’re so important. Hedwig the owl, and then we move through the Thestrals and dragons. They’re key plot points and obviously thematically they work in terms of life and death and power, struggle and treasure, but I realized when I focused on those creatures just how important they were. And that shows that we have a deep need to be connected to the animal world.

I share my three thoughts about the meaning of this conversation after the jump. See you there!

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