(magical music)
- Sure the child is cursed, but the story,
Well, it is pure magic.
Harry Potter and the Curse Child
underwent some structural changes
during the Broadway shutdown
but it is back tighter than before.
And totally disarming. Expelliarmus!
I sat down with the actor who plays grown-up Harry Potter,
Steve Haggard.
(upbeat music)
Well, it's good to see you.
- [Steve Haggard] It's good to see you.
- Well, so I have to ask you,
you are a newbie to New York.
How, how has it been treating you?
It's a little bit different than what we were used to.
- It's great. I have been
falling in love with it.
Chicago was like my home and my heart for a long time.
I'm just surprised that I feel so at home in New York.
There's always a changing, there's always a going
and a movement about New York that,
I've never been any place like it.
- I couldn't agree more.
- Listen to me, I'm such a tourist.
- No, I love it.
I wanna take you on the big red bus or whatever that is.
- Show me New York.
And I get to go to work every day
and be Harry Potter, so that helps.
- Yeah. That's, that's not a bad gig, right?
- Yeah. That's pretty good.
- Well talk about how that happened,
because originally you were Harry and Draco, correct?
- Sure.
- And how long did that last before you got the role?
- Well, I was the understudy for Harry and Draco
and so I was able to do Harry a couple times
in the two parts and Draco, which was
a lot of fun to be able to sort of
do the different versions of that.
And then after the shutdown we came back
and I opened the show as Harry.
They asked me to be Harry and I said, Yes
- I think I'll do it.
- Yeah, maybe, Let me think about it.
One of my favorite things
about doing the show is getting to see
people experience the Wizarding World in a different way.
So like, maybe they've read the books
or they've seen a movie or two,
or all of them, if you're me.
And they come in, they step into this theater
The Lyric Theater.
And from the get go you are
in a world in which magic exists,
in which magic is a just a given.
To be able to experience that every day new
with a new audience is that's really a joy.
- I think what's exciting is people, so many people
I think myself included, waited so long
to dive into that world.
Right? Like, we imagined it in our heads.
We saw it in a movie, but it wasn't really tangible.
And I think the theater, that the show
makes it feel tangible. Right?
- One of my favorite things is to hear kids who come see it.
- [Tamsen ] Yeah.
- [Steve] And I'll do an illusion.
We rehearse these illusions for months.
We, you know, we're very precise about them
because they are happening every, every time
right in front of the audience.
And they have to be very precise to work.
Hearing the kids in the audience go, Ah, like what?
- And the adults, by the way.
- Yes, well, they're that too.
I had a friend who came to see it
and they kept being like, How do you do that?
How does this work? How does this work?
And at some point, over the course of the show,
they were just like
they were just like, I give up, I give over.
I don't know, I don't know how it works.
I don't know.
- You really are magical
- But it's, I think that energy
is what makes the job such a pleasure to do.
Because you remember like,
Oh, someone's experiencing the Wizarding World
for the first time tonight.
- I love the fact that the Potter Heads
are all different ages.
I mean, everyone came to this at a different time.
It wasn't that it came out, everybody read.
It's, you know, you've got an 11 year old
sitting next to a 50 year old
- [Steve] Yeah.
- [Tamsen] And they've either read the book
or watch a movie and they're all, you know
equally just enchanted, enchanted by it.
I don't think you have that very often with shows.
- No, no.
I've done a lot of plays and you don't,
it's a luxury and it's also a responsibility to
portray these characters that so many people
have grown up with or
have a relationship with.
- Let's talk about how you got started
in theater and acting.
You've had a lot of different jobs.
I understand from Chicago, right?
- Oh, sure. I got a lot of different jobs
outside of theater too.
- Right. What did you have?
- Oh man, I had some weird jobs.
I moved libraries.
- What does that mean?
- Did, you know that libraries have to move
from time to time, so you,
I don't know. I, it was me and like
- A lot of library? I don't know. You move books?
- Like colleges, Yeah! You move books.
You go in, you move books
you put them on a truck, you move the furniture around.
I mean, you know, you have to make a living.
- Okay.
- I was a waiter.
I'm a terrible waiter.
- You are?
- Yes
- Why?
- You can't remember? How could you not remember orders?
You remember lines all night long.
- I got so, I get so stressed out.
I got stressed out.
I once dumped a tray full of,
I got fired this night,
but I dumped a tray full of ice water
down this lady's backless dress.
It was terrible.
My manager was like, Steve, can we have a conversation?
And then we both mutually agreed
that it was not the best job for me.
- So it wasn't a firing. It was a negotiation.
- Yeah. We worked it out.
- We agree.
- I was like, you're right, I'm terrible.
- Now, how did you first get involved in theater?
Did you say this is always what I wanted to do?
Did you, was it a
- No, I got cut from the baseball team.
- What do you mean you got cut from the baseball team?
So you decided to theater?
- Yeah.
My mom was like,
mom was like, you gotta get out of the house.
And so my mom encouraged me to do theater.
My high school ended up having this
amazing theater program and my friends sort of tricked
me into auditioning for the director.
I did a bunch of impressions I guess when I was younger.
- Who of, people?
- People I thought,
- Can I see one?
- Absolutely not.
- Why? You do magic every night?
- Well, I just
- Just one?
- No, no. I, no, it's funny.
I think I was really
well, I don't know if I was good at it when I was 15
- Well, somebody thought you were good at it.
- Somebody did. And they sort of, they surrounded me
and wouldn't let me go until I did it for the director.
And the director was like
- You're in.
- You should be in a play.
- You shouldn't play baseball.
- You should be in a play kid!
- We're going to make you a star!
- Yeah.
(upbeat music)