-Jamie, welcome to the show.
-Thank you. This is vivid.
-Vivid?
-This is like new ground for me, so...
-It is, yeah. -Yeah, yeah.
-You've never done a late night talk show?
-No, I'm astonished to be here. Thanks for having me.
-Are you kidding me? Come on, I'm so psyched that you're here.
[ Cheers and applause ] Please, we love you. Thank you.
And obviously you're very, very busy.
I mean, let's talk about this.
How long -- How long is this whole thing?
'Cause you have -- you do --
-It's not eight hours. -It's not?
-I just want to say. -It's not?
-There's another two-part play on the -- that is eight hours.
-Yeah, but that's not -- -That's not this one.
Now, I mean, like, so, there's two plays.
Two acts in each play and every time you sit down,
it's within shouting distance of an hour before you get a break.
-Oh, okay. -So you add it all together --
-Same actors in both shows? -Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you add it all together,
it's about five and a bit hours or something like that.
-That's a lot of work for you.
Don't you think?
-It's a lot of clattering around, yeah.
-Yeah, but I heard they had to, like, gut the whole theater
'cause there's all sorts of special magic things like --
-It's amazing. It's huge. The Lyric Theatre is huge.
and they had really, really big shows in there before,
and they've actually made it smaller.
And they've built a new theater inside the old theater.
So, like, the back wall of the auditorium
is now the corridor outside the auditorium and it's stunning.
-Really? -It's really, really beautiful.
It was designed by the set designers,
so the whole world of the play comes out into the house,
and it starts as soon as you come off the --
off the street into the house. -Really?
-There's a room with patronuses and stuff.
And it's really, really beautiful.
-Is there pressure to play Harry Potter?
I mean, do you go like -- 'cause there's so many fans out there.
"That's not right!"
[ Laughter ]
"He would never do that! Harry wouldn't do that."
-Do you know -- They're amazingly generous.
They really are.
You can go a bit mad with the iconic thing pretty quickly.
-Yeah, that's true.
-You just have to get on with your job.
And the thing is, if you want to do good material,
and if you're lucky enough to get a chance to do it,
then chances are you're probably gonna --
somebody pretty nifty will have been there before you.
Like, in Britain, anyone who's done a main part
in a Shakespeare play,
which is quite a lot of people in Britain,
you know, they have to kind of make peace with the fact that
Laurence Olivier or someone has been there before.
-Oh, yeah. -You know?
When I got the job on "Cursed Child,"
I was doing another show in the West End,
and I was playing a part that Marlon Brando had played,
and, like, I'm not Marlon Brando.
[ Laughter ]
-That's a lot of pressure there.
-Nothing -- Nothing.
-Did you talk to J.K. Rowling?
-Yeah, she's -- she's been -- she's been involved with it.
Was that a gasp? -Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
-This is the whole world of this production is just --
release of information and hearing an audience go, "Huh?"
-Yeah, no -- [ Laughter ]
-It happens all the time. -It does.
-It's lovely.
-I know they have, like, pins at the show
that say keep the secrets.
-Keep the secrets, big time, yeah.
-Keep the secrets.
So no one can talk about what actually happens in the play?
-Yeah, I mean, I think it's just -- it's just --
-Spoiler.
-It is just the spoiler thing, but it's also --
it's just like deliberate act of unkindness, really,
as they come out.
When people hold this so --
You know, they've cherished it since they were children.
They've waited for 20 years. -Yeah.
-And they turn up and saved a lot of money
and flown halfway around the world from wherever
and they come and then somebody says, "I know what happens."
-Yeah, oh, yeah, I don't want to know what happens.
Has Daniel Radcliffe come see it yet?
-He hasn't been in. -No.
-I mean, we sort of -- we're trading -- [ Laughs ]
We're trading bunches of flowers at the moment.
Whenever, like, he opens in a play
or when I'm opening or something,
we're sort of outdoing each other with goodwill.
-The two men who played Harry Potter
are sending flowers to each other?
[ Laughter ]
-Yeah, that's about -- -That's fantastic.
-About the most English thing you've ever heard.
-It is very English. [ Applause ]
-Yeah.
But, I mean, I met him ages ago before --
before this whole "Harry Potter" thing kind of kicked --
-Oh, really?
-Not before he was Harry Potter.
That would have been really young.
-Yeah. [ Laughter ]
-No, he's lovely and classy.
But, I mean, why --
I understand why he might be a bit circumspect about
sitting in a confined space with 1,600 Potter heads.
[ Laughter ] For five hours.
-He can go in a disguise or something.
-Yeah. -Wear an invisibility cloak.
-Yeah. I'll have a chat with the designers.
-Yeah, exactly, yeah.
Do you ever get any time off?
When's your day off?
-We get Mondays and Tuesdays off, which is great.
We're starting to get our time back a bit now.
-What do you do -- what do you do for those --
-Try not to -- well -- now, well, well, well, well...
[ Laughter ]
I noticed you've got Mr. Rodriguez here today,
and we've started doing the Broadway softball league.
-Oh, really?
-Yeah, so we've got --
I've got a shout-out for the Fizzing Whizzbees.
[ Laughter ]
Yeah, that's the name of our team.
Half of whom are British
and don't actually know the rules of softball.
[ Laughter ]
-You don't, right? You have cricket, right?
-Yeah, exactly, so like I was thrown on as pitcher for --
No, I know, like, underarm is hard.
[ Laughter ]
-No, it really is. -Really hard!
-Yeah. -And it's like miles away
and you're trying to throw into a really small window,
and I'm used to like trying to bowl just outside off stump,
and it's just -- it's not a thing over here.
-No. Alex actually wanted me to give you a bat.
-What the -- What the hell is that?
-He got a bat for you. [ Cheers and applause ]
And he signed it.
-That's amazing.
-It says, "Wingardium leviosa."
-Yes, "levi-oh-sa." Not wingardium levio-suh.
[ Laughter ]
-That's exactly how to pronounce it, yes.
You can make things fly with that bat.
-That's amazing. That's amazing. Oh, thank you.