Thanks to the magic of film, we didn't see the work that went into transforming Dan Stevens into his horned "Beauty and the Beast" character ... until now.

With the film's Blu-ray and DVD release on June 6, Disney released a new featurette via USA Today that shows how complicated it was to turn Stevens into the Beast. It required the actor to wear a massive (not to mention absurd-looking) motion capture suit that was apparently not comfortable at all.

"It's an ordeal for my calf muscles alone, let alone, you know, just the whole body," Stevens says in the featurette.

Unfortunately, his co-star Emma Watson isn't in the video to share how she kept a straight face while he was wearing it. We give her all kinds of credit for not giving moviegoers a single sign that her onscreen love interest was sporting an outfit that includes what look like moon shoes. Just for that, she has earned every bit of praise she has received for playing Belle.

The suit wasn't the only challenge for Stevens, though. As director Bill Condon explains in the featurette, they didn't want to use a ton of cameras while shooting scenes with his co-stars, which meant Stevens had to later recreate his performance alone so they could capture his facial expressions. That was for all of his scenes -- "whether they have lines in or not," according to Stevens.

This extra effort was necessary, though.

"I always said we could get everything else in this movie right, but if we didn't get a Beast that people believed in, then it wouldn't work," Condon said.

Based on the film's reception, we'd say it did work. And, hey, it couldn't have been too bad: Stevens has said he'd play the Beast again.

[h/t: Slash Film]