Fantastic Beasts Actor Kevin Guthrie Sentenced to Prison for Sexual Assault

The BBC reports that actor Kevin Guthrie, seen in both Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in the role of “Abernathy,” has been sentenced to three years in jail and indefinite placement on the Scotland sex offenders register. In court, Sheriff Tom Hughes told the actor: “The jury accepted that you committed these heinous crimes and the only appropriate sentence is imprisonment.” The circumstances of the crime Guthrie was found guilty of can be found in their report. Guthrie’s trial lasted four days ahead of the jury’s conviction.

Guthrie’s role in the Fantastic Beasts movies was as Mr. Abernathy, a minor character in the first film that would appear in the sequel as a follower of Gellert Grindelwald. His other credits as an actor include Dunkirk, The English Game, and The Terror. The actor was seemingly set to reprise his part for the third film in the Harry Potter spin-off series as a now-deleted post on the official Fantastic Beasts website revealed. Given how minor his role is it would be possible for the studio to excise him entirely from the film if he’d actually shot anything for it since production resumed.

This wouldn’t be the first cast member from the Fantastic Beasts films to be dropped from the movies, assuming Guthrie was involved in the third film at all. Last November it was confirmed that actor Johnny Depp would no longer play the role of Gellert Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them franchise. Depp’s departure came just days after he lost a libel lawsuit against a British tabloid that characterized him as being abusive, though Warner Bros. didn’t mention this in their statement on the matter simply writing:

“Johnny Depp will depart the Fantastic Beasts franchise. We thank Johnny for his work on the films to date. Fantastic Beasts 3 is currently in production, and the role of Gellert Grindelwald will be recast. The film will debut in theaters worldwide in the summer of 2022.”

Depp was replaced on the call sheet by former Doctor Strange and Casino Royale star Mads Mikkelsen, who revealed that he was a fan of the Harry Potter franchise and was excited to get the call to join the film. That said, don’t him to be doing a Jhonny Depp impression.

“Nobody’s interested in me going in there and trying to copy anything, that would be creative suicide immediately, especially when it’s been done before and masterfully,” Mikkelsen previously shared with Collider. “So everybody’s expecting us to find a different path. Having said that, we need a bridge between what he did and what I’m gonna do, so those bridges you have to find together, whether it’s a certain look, whether it’s a certain attitude in certain situations, but you have to make it your own. Anything else would be plainly just creatively stupid.”

Fantastic Beasts 3 is currently set to hit theaters on July 15, 2022.