As an oversized, hairy, antlered creature with an underlying heart of gold, Dan Stevens’ performance in Beauty and the Beast was cinematic magic.

But what went into the role behind the scenes, well… it turns out that was a whole lot less charismatic than we imagined, and a whole lot more awkwardly stuffed bodysuit.

Releasing a behind-the-scenes video of the Disney reboot via Twitter this week, footage of 34-year-old Stevens dressed in a head-to-toe grey lycra unitard, wearing stilts and a matching grey skull cap (all fitted with CGI dots, no less) was revealed, and honestly, all we can ask is how the hell did Emma Watson manage to keep a straight face through all those scenes?

"The beast is this kind of incredible creation that Dan Stevens developed," director Bill Condon says.

"Dan was in a lycra motion capture suit on stilts to make him as tall as the beast so that Emma was always playing to someone who was big as the beast," something Stevens says was "an ordeal" for his calf muscles.

In addition to wearing the suit, Stevens also had to refilm and recreate his facial movements from previous scenes in a small studio in order the get the beast as lifelike as possible.

This meant trying to remember his exact movements from scenes often filmed weeks earlier and not moving any other part of his body in the process.

"Every single muscle is captured; every pore. And that's why I think so much of Dan's performance comes through," Condon says, "because every twitch is captured."

The things you do as an actor, right?

Watch the full video below: