As Harry Potter and the Cursed Child marks a decade in the West End, David Ricardo Pearce, Naana Agyei-Ampadu, Thomas Aldridge, Joshua Sullivan, Kai Spackman and Tamia-Renée Alexandra talk custodianship, the weight of beloved characters, and why the story still means so much.
Ten years is a long time for any show, but for a two-part epic, it’s close to unheard of.
As Harry Potter and the Cursed Child celebrates its tenth anniversary in the West End, we sat down with the company currently entrusted with J.K. Rowling and Jack Thorne’s record-breaking stage phenomenon: David Ricardo Pearce (Harry Potter), Naana Agyei-Ampadu (Hermione Granger), Thomas Aldridge (Ron Weasley), Joshua Sullivan (Albus Potter), Kai Spackman (Scorpius Malfoy) and Tamia-Renée Alexandra (Rose Granger-Weasley).
And if we could offer them a chance to travel backwards in time or see into the future? The answers are pure character.
“Travel backwards,” says Pearce. “I don’t want to know what the future holds.” Sullivan agrees. Agyei-Ampadu, meanwhile, has other priorities: “I’m going to the future to get the lottery numbers, and I’ll see you guys all later.”
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is playing at the Palace Theatre, London. Book tickets to the last two months of the two-part show here.
Standing on the shoulders of giants
For a two-part show to reach a decade in the West End is, by any measure, extraordinary, and the company feel the significance of the moment keenly.
“It’s a privilege. There’s no pressure at all,” says Sullivan, before expanding on the feeling.
“Very much feel like we’re standing on the shoulders of the giants who’ve come before us in these roles. It’s such a wonderful feeling to be able to celebrate 10 years of this show. It’s just amazing.”
Aldridge agrees it’s a genuine achievement rather than simply a long run. “It’s the only two-part show to have got 10 years in the West End, and that’s a huge commitment from the audience in lots of different ways,” he says. “It’s a privilege, and it’s exciting.”
For Agyei-Ampadu, the milestone is really a testament to the audience. “Ten years is a very big milestone. It’s fantastic to have been a show that’s been so beloved and has been able to be sustained for 10 years,” she says. “It shows that people love it enough to keep coming back. So for that, I think it’s an honour that it’s gone on for this long.”
Kai Spackman, characteristically, cuts to the chase on how it compares to launching a production from scratch: “So much easier than opening a show.”
The weight of the world’s most beloved trio
Harry, Ron and Hermione are among the most cherished characters in modern fiction, so is there a weight to playing them? The company are split, and the disagreement is the most revealing part of the conversation.
For Pearce, the freedom comes from playing a version of Harry audiences haven’t met before. “I don’t personally feel any pressure. This version of him is not so known,” he says. “He’s a dad. He’s older. He’s been through 19 years of having children and working his way through the ministry, and he’s different to the 18-year-old that you last met in the book. So I try not to worry about that too much.”
Agyei-Ampadu understands the instinct not to let the weight take over, but for her, it resurfaces somewhere unexpected: after the show, at the stage door.
“The thing that I carry is the time after the show, when you meet the audience members who love these characters so much,” she says.
“They talk about things that have happened in their life that they feel they’ve been able to get over because they saw this person in the book and they felt a certain level of strength from them. So for me, it’s less of a weight and more of a privilege.”
That thought leads her somewhere moving: to why the story lands so hard in the first place.
“One of the things that I remember when I read it, and my sons read it, was: oh, it could be me,” she says. “This boy who was effectively being mistreated, but didn’t realise he had all of this power and this whole other life. There’s a lot of young people, if they’re going through a tough time, there’s that little spark that one day I might be like Harry, and something magical might turn up in my life.”
And, crucially, that these characters came through it. “These characters you love did go through all of this stuff in the books, but they also survived and they thrived and they had families and they went on to do more,” she says.
“It’s that thing of: you will be okay. That’s the weight that I feel when I’m on stage.”
Why it endures
Ten years in, what is it that keeps audiences coming back? For Sullivan, it’s that the fantasy is only ever the delivery system for something deeply human.
“There’s a lot of themes throughout Harry Potter that a lot of human beings relate to — love, truth, justice, good over evil,” he says.
“These are all themes that get everyone in their feels, regardless of age. And the fact that it’s shown through this fantastical medium of magic and fantasy, a mystical world with dragons and trolls and witches and wizards, but at the core of everything is the humanity, the love of the story. That’s what makes the story good, and I think that’s what people come back to.”
Two sides of the same coin
At the heart of Cursed Child is the unlikely friendship between Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, a Potter and a Malfoy, against all odds. Spackman has a neat theory about why it resonates so deeply.
“There’s two sides of the same coin. They both don’t fit in, they’re both misfits, but they both deal with that in very different ways,” he says. “Albus is very outwardly angry and destructive and impulsive, whereas Scorpius uses humour and personality to disguise his darker thoughts. They’re sort of the yin to each other’s yang.”
For Sullivan, it’s about meeting the right person at the right moment. “It’s a Malfoy and a Potter, and yet they end up being best friends,” he says. “They choose to move forward, they choose to put the past behind them. This is who you are, this is who I am… let’s be friends.”
The characters continue to surprise the actors playing them, too. For Pearce, it was “how much unresolved trauma Harry carries with him. He’s never dealt with it, up until the time of this particular play.”
For Agyei-Ampadu, it’s the balance in Hermione: “she’s reached the pinnacle she would have dreamed of,” rising to Minister for Magic, “and yet still the playful fun that her and Ron have.”
That relationship is, for Aldridge, the beating heart of Ron’s story. “Whatever universe they’re in, whatever version of time they’re in, they are absolutely head over heels in love with each other,” he says. “It doesn’t matter who won the war, he’s still in love with Hermione. That’s really lovely for me.”
And the next generation more than holds its own. Playing Rose who’s the “golden girl” carrying her famous parents’ legacy, Tamia-Renée Alexandra leans into her confidence rather than the pressure.
“Having her parents as Hermione and Ron, that’s a big thing for her, and it gives her that confidence already,” she says. “She’s very headstrong, she knows who she is. The boys don’t intimidate her, like they don’t intimidate me. She’s always got a massive presence. You know when she’s there, because she doesn’t fail to tell you when she’s there.”
“It’s going to be all right”
Thomas Aldridge has played Ron for nine years since stepping into one of the biggest shows on the planet. Asked what he’d tell his younger self on that first terrifying night in the wings, his answer is the perfect note to end on.
“It’s the honour of my career to play this, to be the custodian of a role that means so much to people,” he says.
“I can remember being stood in that wing on my first night, stepping into a show that was already the biggest show on the planet, and being utterly terrified. If I could go back, I’d just say: it’s going to be all right. You’re actually still going to be here in nine and a half years, you did all right.”
He pauses. “I was so terrified of something that was already huge and so loved, and felt like I needed to pick up the baton and not drop the ball. But yeah, it’s just been an honour.”
Click below to watch the full interview
Palace Theatre, London
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