This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:06] Gordon Cox: You are listening to Stagecraft, Variety's Theatre podcast, bringing you in-depth and behind the scenes with the stars and creators of the hottest shows on Broadway and beyond.

[0:15] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Variety's Theatre editor, Gordon Cox.

[0:19] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'll be talking to the actor Jamie Parker.

[0:23] Gordon Cox: You may not know his name, but you certainly know the name of the character he's playing on Broadway, the boy wizard Harry Potter, all grown up and appearing as one of the lead characters in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

[0:34] Gordon Cox: Parker, previously on Broadway as part of the original cast of the History Boys, won an Olivier Award for his performance as Harry on the West End.

[0:42] Gordon Cox: And now he and several other members of the London cast have operated onto Broadway, where the show is in previews ahead of an April 22nd opening, and has already become a ticket so hot it rivals Hamilton.

[0:53] Gordon Cox: Jamie's here in the studio with me to talk about tackling an iconic role, interacting with the Potter superfans, and acting for Broadway audiences versus West End crowds.

[1:02] Gordon Cox: Hey Jamie, thanks for being here.

[1:04] Jamie Parker: Hello, thanks for having me.

[1:05] Gordon Cox: How's Broadway treating you?

[1:06] Jamie Parker: Brilliant.

[1:07] Jamie Parker: Yeah.

[1:07] Jamie Parker: It's great. It's about twelve years since I've been here.

[1:11] Jamie Parker: Yeah.

[1:11] Jamie Parker: Uh and it's changed. It's a different place.

[1:13] Jamie Parker: Changed a lot. You guys have got protected bike lanes now and the city bike scheme, and it's all like, you know, we've all gone very Berlin.

[1:21] Gordon Cox: Are you a city biker?

[1:23] Jamie Parker: Yeah. I am. It's the, well, I mean, it's been pretty lazy about it lately, but just because we're in the thick of the heaviest part of the schedule, but no, it's the only way to get around. Um, but no, I love New York. Very, very happy to be back.

[1:36] Gordon Cox: Do you notice a difference between the Broadway audiences and the West End audiences?

[1:43] Jamie Parker: A bit. I mean, it's this is an unusual project 'cause it's a global audience. You know, would we? Right? It was like a crowd when I saw it in London, it was like an international crowd.

[1:53] Jamie Parker: Yeah, like I'm not sure. You go out the stage door and you meet people from Paraguay and Texas and Australia and Indonesia and just, I mean, just you name it. Um, I met one family who'd come on en masse from Mexico to see the show, but they didn't have tickets.

[2:02] Jamie Parker: They didn't have tickets for the show, but they turned up just hoping that they'd be able to chance their arm and get in.

[2:14] Jamie Parker: They didn't get in.

[2:15] Gordon Cox: Oh man.

[2:15] Jamie Parker: And had to fly back to Mexico with a hammock on it. You know, it, which was sort of on the extreme end of the sort of global pilgrimage that it is. But, but to say that, you know, every day that's the mix. And obviously, like there's a sort of default of the London character in London and New York is definitely bouncier.

[2:35] Gordon Cox: Are we?

[2:36] Jamie Parker: Yeah. Oh yeah, are you kidding? Yeah. Pretty the same. The difference is, I mean, like in London, when they see something that they think is amazing, they go, "Oh." And here you see something that blows your mind, you guys go, "WHA!" and just make just openly asked questions really loudly.

[2:53] Gordon Cox: Right, right.

[2:54] Jamie Parker: Um, which is brilliant. Uh, and especially for us, it's like, you know, we feel like we're in friends or something.

[3:03] Gordon Cox: Right. And so how long did you were you in Cursed Child in London? How long did you do it?

[3:07] Jamie Parker: A yeah, we all did a year.

[3:09] Jamie Parker: Um, and what did you learn from that run that you're now using here in New York?

[3:17] Jamie Parker: Good question. I learned that it's a play that, in Michael Gambon's words, has legs, which means that you don't, it's really all that you're hoping for. Obviously, combined with an audience that is willfully credulous enough to make the play take flight, but you want to have a play that has its own legs, which means that you don't have to be generating something out of nothing.

[3:41] Jamie Parker: It has its own momentum, it has its own kind of melting pot in it that means that you don't have to work too hard. Um, you're hoping to get to that point where you don't have to be doing the work per se with the play, and we've got that because Jack has mined these complex and difficult and longstanding relationships.

[4:09] Jamie Parker: He's mined all of these complicated and longstanding relationships and put them under some pretty juicy crises. Um, and that just means that you can, I mean, we've done upwards of 200 times around the whole story now I think in front of an audience and every time is different.

[4:30] Jamie Parker: Um, obviously there's a consistency to it. It's still the same play, it's still the same people, but you can read the same lines in infinite different ways.

[4:39] Gordon Cox: Do you notice that your Harry now has changed from your Harry then?

[4:43] Jamie Parker: Yeah, I probably do. Um, well, it's just that like I remember teaching our, you know, teaching our son to walk and part of it is just, you know, just the one step in front of another thing and then you occasionally you turn around you go, "Look how far you've walked," um, just to give them encouragement.

[5:02] Jamie Parker: And so just inevitably day by day you make a long list of very, very small decisions and very small discoveries of new things. So I look back to a year ago or 18 months ago and I think there's so much that I didn't understand about the play or hadn't realized connections I hadn't made, or um, I felt like I was doing a very simplistic reading of something, or um, sometimes you take a very circuitous route back to the blindingly obvious and revisit that.

[5:30] Jamie Parker: Um, but yeah, you know, if you're not slightly embarrassed by the person you were last year, then you're not growing at all, are you? You know, um, it's the difference between theatre and film is you're not, you know, it's not fixed, it's not in the can. Every, every go is a take.

[5:46] Gordon Cox: Do you prefer doing it all in one day or breaking it up? What's your preference? Or do you have one?

[5:51] Jamie Parker: Um, no, I mean, um, more often than not we do it all in one day, three times a week. You know, there's only once in the week where, what is that? Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday?

[6:01] Jamie Parker: Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, we do it all in a day. Thursday, Friday is part one, part two.

[6:05] Jamie Parker: Yeah, you can do a Thursday night, part one, Friday night, part two combination. Um, I think, um, what I do notice is that the Thursday night part one is generally pretty bouncier because if you're starting, you because you start, everyone's finished work, you know, at that point, or it's not the weekend and then you know, it's like you're not, uh, they've been awake for a lot longer.

[6:26] Jamie Parker: Um, you've possibly had a drink before you start the show, uh, as opposed to the matinee where, um, so you can you start in a slightly bouncier place on a Thursday night. Sometimes, not all the time. The only thing I find slightly odd is sometimes is jumping straight in with part two on a Friday night.

[6:45] Jamie Parker: Um, because you, uh, you get taken there by the hands all the way to act four in the course of a day, and you just sort of ride that momentum, whereas you stop just and you're what you're calling act four is the second half of part two, yes, okay.

[7:01] Gordon Cox: Play two act two.

[7:03] Jamie Parker: Right. So we just call them act one, two, three, and four because it is one story. It's not, there's no, they do not stand alone. They don't even, they make no effort to stand alone, right?

[7:11] Gordon Cox: No, it's all, you know, like, you know, the movie split Deathly Hallows, one book into two parts for the last one.

[7:21] Jamie Parker: Uh, so it's the same thing. And so tell us about your early involvement in the show. When did you first hear about the project and how did you get the part?

[7:27] Jamie Parker: Compared with a lot of the rest of the sort of the central nucleus of the cast, um, I'm quite late to the party. Um, most of the guys were involved at some point, excuse me, in the workshops that they did when they were still developing it and finding a vocabulary for it and figuring out where it was gonna go.

[7:48] Jamie Parker: Um, I wasn't. So the first thing I knew about it at all was late 2015.

[7:59] Jamie Parker: Is that right? Yes, 2015. Right, it opened in 2016, as I recall in the summer, yeah. Losing track of the timeline. Um, I was doing a completely different show. I was doing Guys and Dolls in London.

[8:12] Jamie Parker: Uh, we were out of town.

[8:14] Gordon Cox: Who were you playing?

[8:14] Jamie Parker: I was Sky Masterson.

[8:16] Gordon Cox: Yeah, okay.

[8:16] Jamie Parker: Um, quite different from Harry Potter.

[8:19] Gordon Cox: Yes.

[8:20] Jamie Parker: Um, but we were out of town for a couple of weeks waiting to come into the West End, and I got a call saying, you know, in principle, would you be interested in Harry Potter in the West End?

[8:34] Jamie Parker: And I, I'll admit I was fairly, um, virgin territory when it came to Harry Potter. I knew I'd read the first book, and I'd seen the first three movies. Um, but I wasn't, you know, I wasn't at the party.

[8:58] Jamie Parker: Um, so I didn't understand the question particularly. I didn't know if it was a musical, which it patently isn't, um, but it's a question that a lot of people asked. I didn't know which, I also was like, which part because I didn't know that the final book finished 19 years later and that they were picking up the story from there.

[9:15] Jamie Parker: Did they, well they must have known that by then I guess, well, uh, they would, did, but that wasn't part of the brief when it was asked by that. They wouldn't have told you that yet. But, but I did, I did say I said which part and they said Harry, and I was like, okay.

[9:27] Jamie Parker: Um, because at last time I was here I wasn't in History Boys, right? And I was fully, you know, uh, fully grown man in a school uniform, and I sort of had visions of being in a school uniform again for a long period of time. I thought surely I'm getting a bit past it to do that now.

[9:42] Jamie Parker: Um, so you know, there was a lot that was surprising and I didn't know, but and I didn't know which team was behind it. Um, but the moment I saw Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender's names at the top of the list, and the fact that they're two major producers, they're producing the show, and then the creative team, you know, half of which I'd worked with before, um, people like Neil Austin, who's the lighting designer, right?

[10:09] Jamie Parker: Who's extraordinary? Martin Lowe, who on handling the music, and then you've got John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett, who, you know, I've been the director and movement, what do we call Steven in this? Movement choreographer?

[10:22] Jamie Parker: Yeah, the movement director or the choreographer and John Tiffany, the director, but you both of whom, you know, their work speaks for itself, it's extraordinary. These are, they're all people I would, um, take up a project blind for them.

[10:38] Jamie Parker: I, you know, I would, I would say yes to a job to work with this creative team without knowing what the part or the project was. Uh, give anything to work with them.

[10:45] Jamie Parker: So, um, and the clincher was seeing Jack Thorne's name, uh, working on the script, uh, 'cause he's responsible for, uh, co-writing what arguably the best TV miniseries I've ever seen of This Is England.

[11:00] Jamie Parker: Um, I think I don't think as many people know that here in probably not. I mean, you know, but, uh, suffice it to say he's an extraordinary writer, uh, and I knew exactly who he was and I, and I, I knew I would want to work with anything that he'd written.

[11:14] Jamie Parker: So I said, of course I'll read it. Um, but there was a thick veil of secrecy over the entire thing obviously so I had to come down from out of town into London.

[11:16] Gordon Cox: Did you read the whole thing?

[11:25] Jamie Parker: Well, like did they actually give you the whole script to read?

[11:28] Jamie Parker: They, they said either we bring a script to Birmingham so there'll be like a security core guy in a helmet with a bat and a gun. Well, so not really, but, uh, you know, we're, I mean, maybe you don't know, but basically have to sit under supervision, um, reading it so, and then it was all like a watermark script and everything and, um, or you come down to London.

[11:38] Jamie Parker: So I said, well, I need to come down to London anyway, so I came down for the weekend, went to Sonia's office, signed a non-disclosure agreement and sat in a very small room for four and a half, five hours with two hundred and fifty pages worth of early draft. It was, it was, you know, it's moved on a lot since, um, since the play text that we've got now.

[12:10] Gordon Cox: And when did you meet J.K. Rowling and did she have any advice?

[12:14] Jamie Parker: Um, I didn't meet her before I had the role. Um, she, uh, my readings for it were put on tape and sent up to Edinburgh, so, um, she must have approved it, I suppose. Um, and, uh, no, the first time I met her was, um, in London when we were rehearsing.

[12:34] Jamie Parker: Was there was there any thought of oh this this woman's got some insight that I might need? I I didn't I didn't solicit it because um I thought there was a that that there's a confidence about um the way John and Sonia told and Jack told the story of them getting the chance to to hound this installment of the story in the first place. You know, she's had a lot of offers uh from people who wanted to do the next installment, and she turned all of them down, and um you're talking about J.K. Rowling getting a lot of offers to do some sort of theater event or a film or whatever, or an arena sort of magicathon kind of thing, uh, or a musical or whatever. Um and she'd always said no, and so there was an inherent confidence in the fact that we were being allowed to do this, and uh an implicit trust on her part uh uh about putting hands up and saying, I'm not a theatre practitioner.

I know I want this story to be told in this medium, but I'm not an expert in this field, I'm going to trust you guys to do your job. So I counted myself as part of that family, and and I said, Okay, uh the understanding is if I'm going wrong, she'll set me right. Right. But she's written the blueprint through seven volumes of backstory, which is pretty handy. Um Yeah, you don't get that for most roles, do you? No, you don't. So uh uh I know I'm gonna get on with my job, and if I'm going wrong, they'll tell me. And um how much did the move did you watch the movies and think about Daniel Radcliffe's performance at all? Did that factor in at all, or is this like an entirely different hairy? I've seen them, and uh Daniel's giving his own uh uh entirely empathetic interpretation of the source material, but it would be incomplete and perhaps inaccurate of me to take the movies as the source material.

So I don't I'm not consciously trying to emulate or imitate Daniel Radcliffe's performance. I that that wouldn't serve that as I say, that would be incomplete. So I I always went back to uh the books. So I'm I'm having been a newbie, I'm now f on my fifth or sixth time through the books. Um I've lost count to be honest. Fifth or sixth. What is what do you gain from rereading them? Um diesel. I mean that it's still after Yeah. That I I realized only about two or three weeks ago listening to the audiobooks as I was cycling through the city and went um and heard a line in Goblet of Fire that's echoed in the play, and I went, How have I only just noticed that now? Like after an entire year's contract in London, um uh it's you know, it it's it just small things, sometimes they'll just be like a pairing of two words together um that also occurs in the play or something, and it in and it's the the most minor sort of uh fading echo of something, but it has an association and it's it's not irrelevant.

It all feeds in. It gives you something new to think about on over the course of because it's a long run. You need you need you can't if you're just stuck in performance mode, you're not growing. You need to keep looping back into a rehearsal mindset. And when you've got so much source material that you can't possibly uh ever have minded all of it, then you just keep digging around and you're always going to stir something up and find something new. It's helpful. As you thought about aging this character up, in your view, what was Harry like as a teenager and how did that influence the kind of adult that he is? Um hardened, tempered through experience, um, but ultimately still a child. Uh so there's this exoskeleton which he's which he's uh acquired through his experience and it's still in place.

And the the um the requirement from him now as a parent is to um be able to show what's underneath that armor uh because you can't be you can't be armored. I mean you you must be you must be forewarned and armed and uh uh have the tools to be a parent, but you can't go into parenthood as a battle and expect to win. We should say that the story is very much about uh one of the central relationships is the relationship between Harry and his son, yes. That's the sort of main meal of the uh of the drama. Uh obviously it's it's far reaching and complex and uh um manifested, but there yeah, that's that that's the main bit of it. And uh so that becomes the question of you know, when when somebody becomes cauterized somewhere in the between the goalposts of eleven and seventeen, uh, and then is then faced with being a parent, hits 40 and realizes that he's now twice the age that his father was when he died, uh and has had to make up parenthood for the last two decades as he goes along, um, with no I mean it would without even a surrogate father, because the little died or left him or been um manifestly not a decent role model.

Um yeah, that's that that's what he's that's what he's learning and finding, scraping around for. Help me. Um how'd you discover acting? When did you come to it? Um well uh I grew up watching my family take part in amateur stuff, um, so I did have very early experiences of where was this? This was in the northeast of England as uh uh a mid-sized town called Darlington. I I noticed I noted that you were born in Cleveland and thought that's surprising. I didn't realize Cleveland. Um small area of the northeast, sort of Billy Elliott kind of country. Right. Um and uh so I got very young, very early memories of of being in a very beautiful theatre, the Darlington Civic Theatre is gorgeous, but you know, that that um that that night and day stark transition of of going from the sort of red and gold broccades of the house and then through the access door to the side of the Proscenia March and going backstage and seeing, you know, the the the ropes of the fly gallery and the dust and the and the prompt corner and going back to the dressing rooms and stuff.

Um which so that's always made it feel like home, but I it couldn't get me on stage, I wouldn't go anywhere near it until um I when I was uh just two I'd just turned twelve. I was I was barely out of being eleven when I when I got on a train and went up to a boarding school in the middle of Scotland with my little round glasses and um Your little round Harry Potter glasses? Yeah, I did believe it or not. Um and this was the nineties as well. She was you know, so she and and I used to hang out in the same so uh the reports are that J.K. Rowling used to write in a place called Nicholson's and the Elephant House and the Travis Theatre Bar, all three of which were places that I used to go to when I was during those years.

But uh I didn't have black hair or green eyes. Um so uh you know, read into that what you want to do. Still don't, actually. No. [20:00] Um but you know, you go to boarding school and you have to find a new family, uh and a new um sense of belonging, and and I found it through theatre. Uh are there any roles you that are on your bucket list? The list has got shorter, um, because I've had an extraordinary decade in which I've I've had a chance to do a few of them. You did I noticed that you played uh Prince Hal through all three of the uh of the Shakespeare Henry Four and Five plays. Yeah, yeah. I mean uh that which is which was mega for me. Um the f the first play I ever saw that that that transported me from start to finish was Henry the Fifth, and um it was decidedly and it was always very specific because of because of the Olivier film, it was always very specifically in a in an Elizabethan playhouse with groundlings and and oak boards and pillars and the the three lines and the Fleur de Lee.

Um and but back then, Shakespeare's Globe on Bankside in London didn't exist. The reconstruction hadn't hadn't got going. Right. So it was a very weird day in my early 30s to find myself tacking in Henry V wearing that that thing in the Elizabethan Playhouse in London. And to uh you know have have got to do Prince Hell leading up to it. Um and there have been others, you know, Guys and Dolls was one of them. Um and um Catnachin Roof and stuff like that. The only one I missed, there was an outside chance of doing Journey's End, but um I I didn't get it, and I'm now too old for that role. So and there and uh there's one more, but I won't say what it is, because uh you know if it's supposed to happen, it'll happen.

Alright. Let's finish with your advice to theatre goers. Uh how much of Harry Potter's story do you need to know going into Harry Potter on the book? Um I I genuinely believe that you don't need to do that. And and I know I know that apart from else because I've met a lot of people who have come to see it um who who aren't potterheads and they don't know anything about it. Um what but but there are but it's replete with Easter eggs for people for you know for the fans, and you know you you will find yourself sitting in there and the entire theatre will go, oh and you'll go, what what? I don't understand. Um there are not it should be said there are not a huge number of those moments where people who don't know what's who do who don't know like a name drop, you're not gonna feel excluded very often, right?

Yeah, but uh the the the the good thing the good news is that that will make you want to probably go and find out and go I don't why was that why was that such a big deal? What do people for people who haven't read the books or haven't seen any of the movies, don't know the story at all, what do they respond to, do you think? Um well, hopefully, if it doesn't sound too pompous, just that that being part of something that exceeds the sum of its parts. Um I think that's that's the joy of a decent piece of theatre is you you can only kind of go, well, it's just cloaks and it's just props and costumes, and yet somehow this seems to have added up to something more significant than that. Um uh more more um more impactful than you might might expect could be possible from such kind of uh uh ragged ragged foils as Shakespeare puts it.

Um certainly there are entrances of uh it's so hard not being able to tell you what happens, but but there are there. That's true, you can't say a lot, can't you? But there are there are moments when certain uh uh figures make their entrances uh where if all you've ever seen is movies, you would not you you will understand that that uh no movie will ever be able to compete with the effect that it has in the room when those entrances happen. Um because it's happening in the same room. Um I have I've seen I have in London I did once see a woman just get up and run. Um one entrance happens, and she was on the aisle, she's on the center aisle. Uh uh and uh and she just got up and ran. Uh but then she missed the rest of the story.

Yeah, well maybe she'll hang out in the back. It's quite near the end, anyway. But uh, you know, but um uh you know that there are you you just just come and say it. Yeah. You've got to be in the room. [24:35] Uh and we'll leave it with that. Okay. Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks for being here. Thanks very much for talking to you. Take care. That was Broadway's Harry Potter, Jamie Parker, now starring in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Lyric Theater. On the next episode of Stagecraft, I'll talk to Captain America himself, Chris Evans, the actor who's currently earning glowing reviews in his Broadway debut in the Kenneth Lonerget play, Lobby Hero. Until then, see you at the theater.