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[0:00] Matthew James Thomas: Hi, everyone. My name is Matthew James Thomas. I have three first names. Welcome to the Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales.

[0:16] Alan Seales: Hey there, wizards, warlocks, and everyone in between. Welcome back to an all-new episode of the Theatre Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and this week's guest is Matthew James Thomas, who plays Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This is the third episode in our Harry Potter takeover here on the podcast. As you hear in this episode, you'll find that Matthew tells a story of how he just found solace and purpose in storytelling and acting after a pretty tumultuous childhood and troubled teenage years. He talks about being bullied, very anxious, like a lot of us, often felt like an outsider, and eventually found his way into the performing arts as an outlet and found his truth, his emotional honesty, and just how theatre became his chosen family.

We talk about what it means to chase emotional authenticity eight times a week, plus we get into the actual magic of Harry Potter, the legacy of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, because he was in that as Peter Parker, and even a few theories about Severance, the TV show we get into at the end. So stick around for this incredibly open and thoughtful conversation. Don't forget to follow me on social media. If you want to watch the full video of this episode, head over to Patreon or find me on Spotify, because Spotify now has video uploads. So leave a rating, leave a review. If you're on Spotify, leave a comment. They have everything now. I mean, kind of take it over the world, I guess. Now, everybody, please enjoy this episode with Matthew James Thomas.

Our guest for this episode is an actor, writer, director, and songwriter known for his dynamic performances both on Broadway and the West End. He originated the title role in the Tony-winning revival of Pippin and starred as Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, recently produced, directed, and performed in a concert with Stephen Schwartz, and was riffed in the 2016 West Side Story production at the Hollywood Bowl, and so much more. His TV and film credits include Accused, Summer of Rockets, Britannia High, and even as a child, he played Simon in the Billy Elliot movie and was in About a Boy alongside Hugh Grant. He's now back on Broadway, on the Broadway stage as Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Matthew James Thomas, welcome to the Theatre Podcast.

[2:32] Matthew James Thomas: No pressure. Harry Potter in Harry Potter.

[2:35] Alan Seales: Harry Potter. Well, spoiler, you're not the Cursed Child, though.

[2:39] Matthew James Thomas: Well, who is the Cursed Child? You seem confident you know who the Cursed Child is.

[2:44] Alan Seales: I am confident in saying that I don't think it's Harry Potter.

[2:50] Matthew James Thomas: Okay.

[2:52] Alan Seales: Do you think it is?

[2:53] Matthew James Thomas: I think you might be correct.

[2:57] Alan Seales: I mean, have you talked about this within the cast? Is there a debate?

[3:00] Matthew James Thomas: Oh, it goes around the building, yeah. Everybody talks about it all the time.

[3:05] Alan Seales: What do you talk about internally?

[3:08] Matthew James Thomas: Certainly, the other day, it came up in Wham!, for those who don't know, Wham! wig, hair, and makeup, and everybody was talking about it. I think there are some fairly confident choices amongst the cast, I think. Again, I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but you'll have to come and make your own decision who you think the Cursed Child is.

[3:31] Alan Seales: Hmm. I think it's probably Hermione. I'm going to go with Hermione.

[3:35] Matthew James Thomas: Okay.

[3:36] Alan Seales: Yeah, no.

[3:37] Matthew James Thomas: Because she has to be friends with Harry.

[3:39] Alan Seales: Yeah, she puts up with Ron. That is a curse in and of itself. Yeah, of course.

[3:43] Matthew James Thomas: I don't know. He's a funny dude. He made me laugh yesterday. We've got the wonderful David Abelis at the moment, and he just pulled something out of the bag that I was not expecting at all during Polyjuice, and I could not keep it together. I'm allowed to laugh in that bit because I'm Scorpius, so, yeah.

[4:00] Alan Seales: Oh, so it's a scripted break?

[4:05] Matthew James Thomas: Not scripted, but it's like—

[4:11] Alan Seales: It's not a scripted break, but they are having fun using these other bodies, which is totally peculiar and fun and great and weird. There's a little moment where we're in the hallway and we're nervous we're going to get discovered, and David just out of nowhere started going behind us and hiding like he was trying not to be seen, which he's never done before. And I was like, what are you doing, David? This is great.

[4:30] Alan Seales: That's amazing. I love when stuff like that happens, when these shows that you've been doing for eight shows a week over and over and over again, you can find these major new moments.

[4:41] Matthew James Thomas: That's when you find them. People ask that question a lot, like, how do you keep it fresh? And I don't even think about that because every day when I get up there to do the show, I know I have no idea what's going to happen. And with a show as big and as long running as this, you're also doing it with new people. So, you have no idea who they're going to be, what their character or what their portrayal is going to be like.

[5:07] Alan Seales: Sure, sure. And I'm sure with a cast like this too, there's always people coming in and out and swings and understudies and standbys that are always rotating through. So, I would say it's safe that the cast list every night is always changing.

[5:20] Matthew James Thomas: Oh, absolutely. And as you say, it's always different. And what's so crazy about this is like you get people who did the two-parter, who have done the show elsewhere, who've done it on tour. And so, you're there happily bumbling along with your version of the show. And then someone comes in and totally turns your idea of it upside down. And you have to go with that. And that's the real joy of it. As I say, it just doesn't get boring. I think people think maybe you're making that up, but it doesn't at all. It's always new.

[5:55] Alan Seales: I think there's got to be some sort of emotional comfort in that. You know who you are, right? You've developed this character. You know what you're going to say. You've got a script. You know where you're going. You've got the blocking. But like you just said, because of whatever's happening in the performers' lives, whatever's going on in the audience, every single show is unique and will never happen again in that exact same way. And so, for you, yeah, I think it would be kind of cool. You have a comfort in knowing where you're going to go, right? Because you have literally a script of what to do and where to go and what to say. But then the experience is, like you said, you never know. If you're actively listening, if you're actively in the scene and present, then it's going to be a completely new experience every single time.

[6:43] Matthew James Thomas: And they don't set it that way. The blocking isn't restrictive other than to stop you walking into a flame ball and setting yourself on fire, which we like to try and avoid. But the blocking is very… which, by the way, really could happen. I don't ever make a plan for a performance. You say, like, I know the role. I might push back there a little bit. That's a big question too. What's the expectations on you of playing this iconic character? And again, if I thought about that, my brain would melt. I go out there loaded with the words, the story, Jack, John, everybody's story, and I see what happens. I have no idea what's going to happen. And I say that very, very honestly. It's no plan making, because I definitely would fail.

[7:37] Alan Seales: Even on the technical side too, because with the illusions and flame was something literally as dangerous as the flame. I was in the orchestra probably a good 12, 15 rows back. You sing your eyebrows. And I felt the heat. I felt the heat off of that flame. And I can't imagine what it's like for you guys on stage. You know what I mean?

[7:58] Matthew James Thomas: It's a fun thing of doing these sort of fantastical, these huge, these spectacle shows. And I've done another one in that building, as you know. When you have these special effects sort of bolstering the storyline, they really do start to feel real. I know, obviously, that sounds a bit silly, right? We're up there wanding and fire's coming out of the wand or whatever. But when it is that lethal hot, and it's right next to your hand, and it happens when you call a spell, it does start to feel quite real, especially when the 1600 people in the audience also gasp because they couldn't see it coming, and they don't understand. And in that very same place, I used to take off and fly around the theater. And that was equally probably silly in concept, but in the moment of the play, it felt very real. I felt like I could fly.

[8:50] Alan Seales: Well, okay, let's go there then, because I wanted to bring up Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, because this is one of the most infamous shows in Broadway history and arguably Broadway's biggest flop financially. So being part of that, do I say legacy history? Let's say history. Let's say history. I'm trying to read your face right now.

[9:20] Matthew James Thomas: No, go, go. I love talking about this show.

[9:22] Alan Seales: Well, okay, okay. So let's dive into it, because I mean, there's so much controversy around it, and so many people got hurt, and careers were changed in some good and some not so good. What was your experience overall being in Spider-Man and having to deal with, I guess, well, deal with, is that the right term? Deal with all of this news?

[9:45] Matthew James Thomas: Look, in terms of life, I'm sure you can imagine the answer is that it was fascinating because you know, getting to be involved in something that was historic as a production as Spider-Man was, I look back only with gratitude to getting to go on that adventure, because anytime you do a production like this, it's a huge adventure and you have no idea. The show was incredibly ambitious and was led by a visionary, Julie Taymor, and obviously had fantastic people attached to it, counterparts of the production. I say counterparts or major backbones of the production, Bono and Edge and so on and so forth. So being even in the vicinity of those people wasn't a letdown. They were as amazing as you might read about them or think about them.

The production itself, of course, went through a lot of trials and tribulations. And I had such an interesting perspective of it, right, because I came on right at the beginning. I built a lot of the flying tracks. You know, Reeve and I were back to back for a lot of that early training because they knew the show really couldn't be done by one person, eight shows a week. And they were right. The show was far too difficult to do that, both physically and vocally. But that did give me the vantage point of being able to watch on to how the show was being built and created a little more, I think, because I was sort of on the outside looking in, meaning I could be in the house one night watching how the audience responded to things and then on the stage the next day.

And that was very often what it would be because when we were building the show, we were swapping in and out quite a lot. Also a wonderful thing to get to learn from Reeve and to hear him, certainly the way that he uses his voice and in that character because he's an incredible artist. And so, I got to watch and learn from him too. But, you know, I don't have a short answer to this question because it explodes with the idea of what was Spider-Man like. And I get a little sensitive when I hear the word flop because that wasn't what we experienced. And by the way, everybody uses that word so it's fine, but it wasn't what I experienced.

[13:09] Matthew James Thomas: Had the same sort of effect that you would see with Avenue Q, where after a while, you just stop watching the actors, and you go back to the wall. Yeah, you just forget they're there. And it was so fast, and it was right above your head. And yeah, I still can't believe that they managed to pull that off. In the 2.0 version of the show, once they'd closed and reopened it, that stuff, they really had it down. There were very few holds, and the production was running smoothly because it had its trial period, which I often think should have been done out of town. Don't come into Broadway with plenty of open ideas because it's going to cost you a lot of money.

[13:46] Alan Seales: Well, on the flip side, though, how much would it have cost to build that set remotely and then move it in? Because the whole stage... At that time, I was working a corporate job at Thomson Reuters right around the corner. Two or three Times Square, I forget what it is, right in the corner of 7th and 42nd. So the back of my building is your theater. And I would go home every single day and walk by the loading dock for six or eight months, and they were loading in and building, and it took forever. They dug up 43rd to put new power into the building because they didn't have enough power.

[14:27] Matthew James Thomas: Really?

[14:28] Alan Seales: Yeah, yeah.

[14:29] Matthew James Thomas: That's crazy. I didn't know...

[14:32] Alan Seales: It was that big, that production. And again, it's an interesting talking point, I think, with Harry as well because what I love about getting to do these shows, funnily enough, is the intimacy of the storytelling, but they're these huge productions. And I think that's so, so important for their survival is that they are intimate, right? That you get closer to these characters that you've seen on the screen or whatever, and they're in the real. And that balance between the spectacle and the very close-up storytelling, you know. And theater directors often talk about like, you know, this would be the close-up moment, you know. And there are plenty of those in Harry as well, where all of a sudden, the theater gets much, much smaller.

And it's part of what's integral about the design, I think, of Cursed Child is its minimalism. You know, I think people expect there to be all these crazy moving sets, and there are, but it's the whole thing, right? So a lot of the time, then it's just a desk and a lamp, and you're in a room, and it's just good storytelling. It's hopefully good acting. Yeah. And you're just left alone, you know, in the room with these characters that you've grown up with.

[15:40] Alan Seales: Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. I think there's moments when the whole audience leans in, they have to, because we're interested in what's going to happen. And we know these characters, especially, well, I love how Cursed Child actually kind of hits two demographics. There's me in my 40s, who grew up with the books and the movies, and then my kids, who I'm bringing, who are maybe getting their very first exposure to the Harry Potter universe through this. And this is a story, this is IP, this is characters that transcend international borders and languages. And they're all coming to see this show night after night after night. And it's just a testament, I think, to how good, like you said, how good the script is. It's a well-written script. The book is great. And then the performances too are just-

[16:35] Matthew James Thomas: I brought that up the other day, because I was talking to my incredible dresser, Brad, and I was like, huh, another 12,000 people. And he looked at me like, I was like, yeah. I'm like, every week it's 12,000 people that sit out there in the house. It's 12,000 new eyes and ears on this material and getting to work with it. I mean, it just doesn't get boring. I'm sorry, it doesn't. That's why I think you're good at your job. You enjoy what you're doing, and you enjoy the gift of storytelling to people.

[17:07] Matthew James Thomas: I do, and it is a huge privilege. I don't say that lightly. Getting to be out there. Sometimes there are a couple of scenes where the action's frozen and it moves over to the other character on the other side of the stage, and you get to sometimes look out, or you can feel the depth of the audience. It's actually quite difficult to see the audience with the lights set up, because there are so many lights, so it's black out there. But you can feel them. When 1,600 people are quiet, that's when they're the loudest. You can really feel them when they're quiet. It's a very peculiar and electrifying feeling that it just feels like they're in the room with you, and they're listening so contently. I love that feeling. It's never going to get old.

[17:56] Alan Seales: Yeah. Don't go anywhere. We're going to take a quick commercial break.

[18:01] Alan Seales: All right, everyone. Now we're back. Do you miss singing, or is this a reprieve of like, I don't have to worry about my voice so much?

[18:06] Matthew James Thomas: I mean, I do have to worry about my voice just as much, funnily enough. I don't know. I was talking about this the other day. I find the voice to be this incredible thing. I mean, I sort of can't believe anybody can do eight shows a week, let alone sometimes nine, or even 14 if it's Thanksgiving or whatever, and you get a push schedule. I remember doing a run of 16 shows of Spider-Man, oh, thinking by six I would be out. I can't remember there was a particular coverage issue, so I had to keep going. Or they asked, they were like, can you keep going? I was like, I think so. Let's just keep going and see what happens. But you know, you use your voice differently. I mean, I love singing. I sing all the time, so I don't miss it.

Do I miss doing it in production? Sometimes, yes. I love the fact that there was no singing in this production, let me put it that way. I think it's well-structured as a play and should stay that way. But yeah, no, I mean, musicals are extremely difficult, and forgive me for saying this. It's just why so often they're not very good. When they are good, they're probably the most phenomenal thing that you can see on the stage, and when they're bad, which is often, they're fairly unbearable. But getting that balance right, where storytelling with music and finding the transition, or finding inventive ways to make it work in the medium, which a lot of people have done. There's shows such as Once, and even The Band's Visit, I thought, was very inventive in the way they use music.

And I think the way that this show uses music, I don't think people necessarily expect to hear the tone, the shape of Imogen's style in this world, but it just so works. I think the convention, the idea, the convention of music theater often sort of traps it. And then you get a lot of these shows that are sort of just trying to do the same thing, because it's what the audience expects, which is very difficult. Something I've learned about being an actor is it's very difficult to shift people's perception of you. And I think, certainly, the idea of the genre of music theater suffers that same thing. It's like, this is a music theater, this is a musical comedy, or whatever. And the real shows that break through that are the ones that are inventive with how to use the medium in a different way.

[20:29] Alan Seales: Oh, sure. Sure. Look at the main staples of Broadway over the last few decades that have changed things. Hamilton, of course, being one of the most recent ones. And there's like Rent, and then Oklahoma. And if you keep going backwards, like every one of these kind of like twisted the genre to introduce a new style within musical theater, that then everybody tries to emulate, exactly to your point, for years and years until the new thing comes along, and then everyone tries to emulate that.

[20:58] Matthew James Thomas: Right. And the audience is sort of, I think, rightly so, expect to see, they want the same level, what's the presence of an Elton John concert, an Adele concert, or a Billie Eilish concert, right? They want that level of, you know, but those people very often only do three or four shows a week. Yeah, they blow out their voice, they go as hard as they can, and then they stop. And I think what creates the sort of mode of music theater, certainly in the bigger territories for it, West End or Broadway, is this, that the shows have to keep running, and they have to do eight shows a week. And sort of then, yeah, certainly, back to the voice, right? You know, you have to learn how to control that. And so, the show doesn't feel quite as present or as unhinged.

I think that's what I enjoy when I see performance. I just saw, what was the production? I didn't just see it, but Little Life and that play, I could not believe that they were going to get up there and do it again. Like the pain that they had suffered through their performances, that was totally real. And they had been doing that, you know, and certainly they weren't doing it for a year, and it wasn't a long running production. But I mean, yeah, yeah.

[22:05] Alan Seales: Yeah, it's tough. I've talked with so many people in that position where they're cutting themselves raw emotionally eight times a week. And then, you know, they come home and they have to literally shake it out. Like Elizabeth Stanley told me after Jagged Little Pill, right? That show deals with so many types of abuse and heart issues that literally before she left the theater, after every show, she'd have to just go and shake it and leave Mary Jane on stage and go home and be Elizabeth Stanley again.

[22:41] Matthew James Thomas: Yeah, absolutely.

[22:42] Alan Seales: Right? You've got to have a hard separation. Otherwise, you're not your job and you can't take that home with you.

[22:49] Matthew James Thomas: To a degree, but you do. If I'm being honest, it kind of is what it is. And maybe there are some people who are better at this, you know?

[22:57] Alan Seales: Did you go home and you're trying to like, wave your wand around?

[23:04] Matthew James Thomas: Accio gold.

[23:07] Alan Seales: Accio TV remote.

[23:10] Matthew James Thomas: Yeah, no, but you know, I mean, not to spoil anything either, but you know, I get to the end of the show and I watched my parents in this obscure sort of twist of the universe. I watched my parents get murdered and it's, yeah, I mean, it is what it is. You know, you step into those shoes and you also, there's something so beautiful about that moment is that now for the first time, Harry's been dealing with this by himself and he finally isn't, you know, his friends are there with him. And it's such a, that is such a overwhelming feeling that I get and I get to stand in those shoes. I actually just spoke to Max, who is the voiceover for, well, I suppose he plays my dad, right? You know, he comes in for that scene when they've traveled back in time.

And I just said to him, I'm so grateful for your performance in that. It's just a voiceover, but it's so real and it's so guttural. And it moves me every night in the show, but both him and Ali, who plays my mom too. I just love that. I love that. I've heard that I think over 130.

[24:46] Matthew James Thomas: My parents were into theatre. They would put on productions. My mum had a theatre school. It was like a local theatre school in the county of Bucks, which could be likened to Godric's Hollow with various thatched roofs. When he says that at the end, I'm like, none of you know what he's talking about, but I do, because the clock tower and the thatched roofs and the pub on the corner. I definitely understand that world, but that's where I grew up. I grew up in the English countryside. My parents were into theatre. My dad was a musician. My grandma was a pianist, so it was sort of in my family. I was a bit of a troubled kid. I was a bit of an Albus. I was not well-behaved. I was acting out quite a lot, and eventually I found theatre.

My mum got me into the drama course, along with other things – dance, singing, all that stuff – which was eventually a great place to take out all of that energy, but it also resulted in more bullying and trouble at school. So the acting out stopped when I went to a place called Sylvia Young, which was a theatre school in London, or at least it was reduced, because I met just some of the best teachers I could have had. They knew what to do with that energy and how to channel it, and as soon as I understood that – I don't think I understood it consciously, but started to subconsciously understand it – and that was channeled then into auditions. Once I figured out that I could take that thing into a room, and that's what these strange adults on the other side of the table wanted from me.

They didn't want me to be fake. They wanted me to feel real things. I had plenty of real things. I don't know where they came from, but I think that's how that started, and I just started auditioning for theatre and film and just started booking straight away. I don't know. For a long period between, I think, 10 and 15, I just played everybody's child in their divorce. I had four or five parents that were just getting divorced, and I'd be the sad kid sitting on the staircase crying. It's very Albus, actually, isn't it?

[27:07] Alan Seales: Wow. Wow. Your childhood – it's funny. I was just talking with Matt Doyle, who was saying he got – in sixth grade or middle school, he was bullied and knocked unconscious sometimes, that kind of level of bullying. They picked on him because he was effeminate, right? He wasn't out yet in middle school, but they were just picking on him because he was different. I'm just bringing that up because it's most recently in my mind. It really stinks that kids like that can just sort of take out their anger, their own need to act out on others, which causes the people they are then bullying to act out in their own way. It just continues this nasty cycle.

[27:47] Matthew James Thomas: Yeah. I mean, when I talk about – yeah, I mean, I'll share a similar story. I mean, a kid locked me in – it was one of those sort of shipping containers. He burst my basketball with a knife, and they threw me in the shipping container. My mom didn't know where I was, and I was banging, and they finally found me. I mean, that's insane. Can you imagine how terrified I was? Yeah, I mean, there is this very nasty side of growing up that I think that's really brutal. Again, not to bring it back to the show all the time, but it really does hit home every time you hear something that's sort of lodged in the story about just how difficult growing up is, especially in a world certainly where the adults don't know what they're doing, and historically don't, and continue to show us no real sense of leadership.

I think that's where as kids, we feel it, and we're being told to do this one thing, which is a complete contradiction to how the adults are living their lives. So there is the burst, and I think kids don't quite know what to do with that energy. I don't really believe that anyone's bad through and through, and I forgive all of those guys. I can see it now from this perspective and think, like, oh, that was probably funny. They didn't realize that it was really awful, or the effect that it was having.

[29:29] Alan Seales: Well, that's playing the truth of any villain. You wake up in the morning not to be like, how can I be the worst possible person I can today, but you're playing your truth, and your truth just happens to sometimes be physically hurtful to other people, or emotionally hurtful, but you're still playing your truth. But it's important access, I think, as well. For things that I didn't even know that I had sort of where I'd put them in roles that I've played as I've grown up, and it's still there, like that pain or the idea of that pain, maybe. And even sometimes the more magical moments of life, that stuff sticks with you, like the deeper stuff, and you don't know. I certainly don't reach for it, but it'll come up, and sort of the access to that, I think, certainly, I presume, I don't know this to be true psychologically speaking, but was built and defined in those moments, and so is therefore available to me.

So, it's cliché to say, but I do sort of look back with thanks to those moments. I'm glad I'm still here. I'm glad it didn't get too bad, or that I didn't do anything too stupid in retaliation. It was all sort of living and life and difficult, and I'm glad I went through it.

[30:47] Alan Seales: Well, when you finally were able to find your chosen family, find more of a home in theatre and on stage, do you remember what it was about, was it storytelling or the attention, the validation? What was it about being on stage and performing that really made you feel comfortable? Truth?

[31:04] Matthew James Thomas: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think at the base is that I started to realize that although we were telling stories, that I was meeting a sense of a real energy that was unbridled, that wasn't trapped. That's not to speak of every performer, but there were some people that action would be called, and all of a sudden, Bill Nighy would become more real, not the other way around, or all of a sudden, Michael Gambon would become more real, or Miranda Richardson, or Jamie Bell, or whoever. Action would be called, and then life would start. I think, honestly, that's why I started to rebel so much because I would go home, and we would all be sort of keeping the cap on everything. Like, oh, this is what this is.

I'm just like, no, it's not. You're lying. Why are you making a fuss out of this? Why are you putting too much drama behind this? It's nothing. Nothing's happening. You can see that that person is just making up a story about this because they don't want to pay for their ballet class or whatever it is. So why are you falling into the rhythm? I started to generate thoughts like that, and again, I was getting trained by good drama coaches who were like, yes, run with that. Run with that. Where does that take you? Where are you going? And you would never meet the end of that feeling. It would just keep getting bigger and bigger, and it still does. As I say, I go out there, and I'm chasing this thing, and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and it gets more fun to do that.

I think that's probably where most of that rebellion came from. I still feel that way now. When you meet people who perhaps aren't as experienced, or maybe you're not even getting there on the day, and you're working with somebody who is far more experienced than you, what I notice about those people, and I'll just keep them nameless, is sometimes they're not quite there, and it's up to you to lift them up. I think about this a lot. It's like prop up your other actor. Don't worry about what you're doing. Think about what they're doing. Be there for them, and I don't mean this as any kind of advice. It's just what I think about all the time. Then the good stuff happens because you can't be self-conscious when you're thinking about other people.

[33:28] Alan Seales: How do you separate yourself? Did it always come natural? I know that a lot of people, and myself included, when you're going into this extreme version of yourself, or extreme version of a character that's not anywhere close to yourself, you have to be comfortable and know that you're safe. You have to be able to let go and be someone that you're not necessarily comfortable being for whatever reason. It sounds like that path is actually what gave you a lot of solace and a lot of catharsis, but for other people, if you're angry, or you're just upset about something, or you're frustrated, how did you find your way to just fall into that feeling versus being afraid of people judging you for it?

[34:12] Matthew James Thomas: Well, because life was intolerable outside of it, and still is. So panic, anxiety, the fear, the lie of the world, the idea is what we are. It doesn't happen all the time, but in the good spaces where somehow a group of humans had come together and said, let's go. Let's go there. Do we all agree? The trouble with that space is that anything can happen. It's sort of the reverse of social panic because when you're out there, you don't want to upset anyone. You want everybody to be happy, but that's just not life. It's not how it goes. In that space, you get to open that feeling up like, what is this feeling? Why am I feeling rage on this particular word? Why am I feeling an immense amount of love or empathy?

I think when I say truth, it's the most real I think I can be in that space where I go like, I don't know what I am. I don't know what I think. I don't know anything about anything. I never have. I never will. But this is how I feel right now. I can't think of anything more exciting or addicting because that's living for me. I totally understand when you try to fit into that world out there. Forget it. Not going to happen. I don't fit. I never will. I keep trying. I keep trying and I don't fit.

[35:54] Alan Seales: It's tough. It's really tough to try to – you're right. As a kid, you're doing this a lot, I think. A lot of kids are. They try to be the person that they think others want them to be. And it's really hard and even adults too, right? And then you get the corporate environment around all of this where you can't – this phrase like, bring your whole self to work was replaced by bring your best self to work. But what is your best self?

[36:26] Matthew James Thomas: It's really interesting that… That's spot on, actually. I very often disagree with the idea that Harry is a bad dad, and I'm sure the creatives would disagree. I don't know, actually, because we haven't talked about it in a while. But it's this idea that Harry is a bad dad, and I'm just like, Harry doesn't know what he's doing. Harry is going along with the flow of life, past having watched a lot of his friends be killed, his parents be murdered. He's doing his best, and Albus is also. It's another thing that this play does, I think, that is really magical. It sounds like I'm just trying to bring this in for the sake of the podcast. I promise you I'm not. I really am genuinely getting enthusiastic about it.

It is a genuinely great story. I think this is why I was brought… When the opportunity came up yet again to go for it, I was just about the right age to play him now. I'd seen the production, and I had ideas. I'm like, I want to do it this way. Not to say that anything… I loved the production when I saw it. But you get these two universes. They don't jam, but they have to. They have to somehow. And you see these two people living in the same world, sort of, but not at all. Albus, all these kids are being like, your dad, this. It's inescapable for him, as is the freight train that's coming towards Harry. I don't know if this is how they meant it to feel, but certainly it's almost the idea that your fears can manifest.

And the more you push them down, the more likely a time turner is going to pop up in the world, and then there's going to be access to this awful, deadly, lethal thing. And of course, it's then going to be connected to your child, right? So I'm sure that that leaks into the feeling of parenthood. I don't want to imagine that anything bad could happen to my kid on the way to school, but if I do, will I bring that into the universe? And that is, again, I think about that every night before I go out there. It's like, he doesn't know he's at the train station. He's like, all right, you got everything. Go get him, kid. You're going to love it. And wanting him to find his own love for it, which eventually he does.

I love that. I would disagree that... I didn't realize that there was a consensus that Harry's a bad dad. I disagree with saying he is. I don't think he is at all. I think he is doing the best that he can. Harry's doing the best with what he's given, and he didn't choose where the celebrity status he has.

[39:00] Matthew James Thomas: No, absolutely not at all. I think he would have tried to run away from it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, he did try to run away from it. And then Dumbledore obviously put him with the muggles to keep him away from the celebrity side for a while and have him grow up with a sense of humility that I think is carried into his teenage years and adulthood that then again, Harry trying his best, trying to get his son Albus to also just be, we'll put in air quotes, normal, right? But you just can't when you carry the Potter name, you can't. And again, it's an event, right? This idea of finding your own way, you often have to go down this path where you make, and in this case, and in the fantasy world of Harry Potter, these huge mistakes.

And you do, and I certainly wouldn't advise anybody to do this, but you do sort of learn when you're on the train tracks, graffitiing, listening to garage music, and then not realizing that a train is going to hit you because you're listening to garage music, thinking you're really cool, graffitiing, rebelling against whatever it is you think you're, you do sort of learn the difference between life and death when the train passes behind you. And it's just about, it's half a meter away from you. I mean, this is a true story. I say, not fondly looking back at who I was as a teenager, but that is what I did. And then I do, I see Albus on top of the train every night, you know, and yeah, you know, they've got these giant fans that pump smoke and like, you know, are kind of blowing them off the back of the train.

They have to hold themselves down because it's so strong. And I totally recognize that moment because it's like, how am I going to get out of this thing? How do I escape this world that is so loud and annoying and won't stop defining me in a way that I can't, you know, that I don't agree with, that I don't yet understand. And I think you come out the other side of that and you realize that, yeah, I mean, you realize whatever you realize. Well, youth is wasted on the young. I, sure. Although you couldn't get me back into my 20s if you tried. I'm happy at 30. It's fine. I want to be back into my 20s knowing what I now know.

[41:35] Alan Seales: Absolutely.

[41:36] Matthew James Thomas: Oh, my God. I need a time turner. Well, I don't. We see the problem with time turners. Mind you, I would still ruin my knees because it was worth it.

[41:43] Alan Seales: Did Spider-Man ruin your knees?

[41:44] Matthew James Thomas: I think every show I've done has ruined my knees. They still work, so I'll keep using them.

[41:51] Alan Seales: Well, we'll blame Pippin. Pippin destroyed your knees.

[41:54] Matthew James Thomas: Yeah, let's blame Pippin and Terrence Mann, of course. Terrence Mann got it.

[41:58] Alan Seales: Terrence Mann ruined my knees.

[41:59] Matthew James Thomas: Yes, you heard it. You heard it here.

[42:01] Alan Seales: We're going to take a quick break for a few commercials.

[42:04] Alan Seales: All right, everyone. Welcome back to the episode. All right, so as we start to wind down the episode here, we're going to play Plot in 60 Seconds, which is a fun little game where you give me a number 1 through 16. I have a list of 16 popular musicals, and whichever one you pick, you give me the plot to that in 60 seconds.

[42:21] Matthew James Thomas: Oh, I'm going to be so bad at this.

[42:31] Alan Seales: These are the best, then.

[42:33] Matthew James Thomas: Okay.

[42:34] Alan Seales: You can make it up as much as you want, embellish, do whatever you need to give me this plot in 60 seconds. So give me a number 1 through 16.

[42:42] Matthew James Thomas: This is cruel. Five?

[42:44] Alan Seales: All right, five is you're going to give me the plot in 60 seconds to Les Mis. Go.

[42:50] Matthew James Thomas: 60 seconds remaining. Okay, man. I can only see Jon Owen Jones because he was amazing playing the character. Steals a loaf of bread, and he gets in trouble because he's really angry. A cop doesn't like people who break the rules, and then he goes on the run, and that's about as much as I can remember. No, what happens? Oh, yes. It's the French Revolution, so a bunch of people don't agree with the way the government is doing things, so they make a big barricade. And they sing about it, and they sing about freedom and liberation. Oh, they're students. That's right. Then what happens?

[43:36] Alan Seales: 15 seconds remaining.

[43:37] Matthew James Thomas: And then there's the Gazette and Eponine, and they sing beautiful songs, and then – oh, that's right. He's sort of – that's all I've got. It's too early. Why did you do this to me? Five, four, three, two, one.

[43:49] Matthew James Thomas: On my own.

[43:52] Alan Seales: There you go. That's it.

[43:53] Matthew James Thomas: And in half a way…

[43:53] Alan Seales: You should see it. It's great.

[43:55] Matthew James Thomas: In half a way, he shaves her head, and speaking of Terrence Mann, he originates a role, and…

[44:00] Alan Seales: Oh, there you go. I missed that. There's actually a picture of him.

[44:04] Matthew James Thomas: One of the dressers worked with him, I think. There's a picture of him that I see every day as Javert when I go into the theatre, which is hilarious.

[44:11] Alan Seales: Now, shifting into the three standard closing questions, I ask everyone to wrap up. The first one simply is just what motivates you.

[44:15] Matthew James Thomas: Truth.

[44:20] Alan Seales: Truth, beauty, love. Moulin Rouge. Yay. Okay. What advice would you give to your younger self and younger people listening now, starting out down a similar path?

[44:26] Matthew James Thomas: Keep going. Be kinder to yourself. Be much, much kinder to yourself.

[44:33] Alan Seales: And don't tag trains.

[44:35] Matthew James Thomas: Yeah. Do not get into graffiti.

[44:37] Alan Seales: There you go. If you could only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what would you see?

[44:40] Matthew James Thomas: TV or musical or anything.

[44:46] Alan Seales: Whatever you want to choose.

[44:48] Matthew James Thomas: Um, I wouldn't mind. Well, right now I'm kind of stuck on Severance. So let's just be in the Severance world because it makes no sense, but it's fantastic.

[44:59] Alan Seales: Oh, I'm with you on that one. I feel like I could watch it over and over again. And the level of thought and detail and just specificity they put into every single shot is it's a masterpiece.

[45:14] Matthew James Thomas: It really is. I don't know what it's about.

[45:17] Alan Seales: There are people on YouTube who do.

[45:18] Matthew James Thomas: Nobody knows.

[45:19] Alan Seales: I have no idea. And we go off into a new world every time. I don't know what's going on.

[45:25] Matthew James Thomas: I'm convinced that Ben was like, yeah, I can make a TV show about absolutely nothing be the most entertaining thing.

[45:32] Alan Seales: Oh, I think, let's see, my theory is that Miss Huang is the child of Mark and Gemma.

[45:41] Matthew James Thomas: Oh, gosh.

[45:42] Alan Seales: And it's something to do with trying to make people live forever through like they're trying to encapsulate people's entire personalities in this chip. And I think that Audie Mark is actually also severed. And we don't know where the layers end because we're looking, spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the end of season two yet, um, that, uh, uh, that episode was it season two, episode five or six with Gemma, where we see that it's not just an Indian and Audi. There's it can be seemingly infinite versions of a person. And so how do you, how do you know what's real and what's not? That's, I think, I think we don't know where the line has been drawn.

[46:28] Matthew James Thomas: Did you watch a YouTube video or did you figure that out?

[46:28] Alan Seales: No, no, no, no, no. I have, I literally, I'm going back through listening to the rewatch podcast, the severance podcast hosted by Ben Stiller and Adam Scott. So like, they're going through and talking about things. And I'm just like, I've rewatched season one to prep for season two again. And like my friends and I are constantly setting theories back and forth. It's really, it's like, just when you think they, you know, they can't do it, another great television show comes out and you're like, I don't, that's amazing. I just love, I love the actual, like the, the photography that the DPS on the show are, they, they need all the awards. Every shot is a portrait.

[47:05] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[47:07] Matthew James Thomas: It's so beautiful. Anyway.

[47:08] Alan Seales: Great, great.

[47:09] Matthew James Thomas: Agreed. Same with Harry Potter. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Every scene, every bit of acting moment.

[47:15] Alan Seales: Is a masterpiece.

[47:17] Matthew James Thomas: It's a masterpiece. It's great. I'm happy to learn you're British. I wouldn't have guessed your American accent is great.

[47:20] Alan Seales: Ah, thank you. I don't have to do it anymore for now.

[47:27] Matthew James Thomas: I don't have to do it. I don't have to do it for a whole seven months.

[47:33] Alan Seales: Well, where can we connect with you online? Do you, do you get on social media at all?

[47:38] Matthew James Thomas: I do have a social media account. I don't like social media. I just wish it would go away. But I have one because I feel like I need to sort of, which I hate. I hate.

[47:49] Alan Seales: What is it? Where can we connect with you?

[47:51] Matthew James Thomas: It's Matt. I think it's Matt James Thomas. Yes.

[47:55] Alan Seales: Yes. Why the yes?

[47:57] Matthew James Thomas: I don't know. I think because someone else was there. Oh, there was another Matt James Thomas that was pretending to be me, but it's not me.

[48:03] Alan Seales: Oh, that's not cool.

[48:05] Matthew James Thomas: So Matt James Thomas. Yes. It's like, this is actually.

[48:07] Alan Seales: Yes.

[48:09] Matthew James Thomas: Sort of me.

[48:10] Alan Seales: This is me.

[48:10] Matthew James Thomas: Yeah.

[48:10] Alan Seales: All right. I'm on threads, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Let's see. Leave a rating and a review. If you liked what you heard, tell your friends, spread the word. Go see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Go see Matthew James Thomas. Matthew, thank you so much.

[48:25] Matthew James Thomas: Thank you. This was so fun.

[48:27] Alan Seales: For this lovely conversation.

[48:27] Matthew James Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.