Can you sum up Harry Potter and The Cursed child for us? (Spoiler Alert)
Anthony Boyle: So it is set [nineteen] years after the ]last] book. It picks up at the chapter in the end of the last book that is called nineteen years later and it is about Potter and the gang, and their whizzing their children off to school. Harry Potter has a kid called Albus, Hermione and Ron has a child called Rose. Then big bad Draco shows up with this little weird child called Scorpius and that’s really it from the book.

The play picks up on the platform and it’s about the younger generation, Rose, Albus and Scorpius heading off to school, and they get up to all sorts of shenanigans and mischief and they go on an adventure. The plays really about not repeating your father’s mistakes and the relationships between fathers and sons, it’s a lovely play actually

Do you find similarities between you and Scorpius?
Boyle: He’s definitely a better person than me, he’s a posh little English boy and he’s just got so much love in him and a want for fun. I think I may be a bit more of a pessimistic and a realist then he is. He’s definitely made me a better person playing him.

How was the audition process for getting Scorpius, it must have been so competitive.
Boyle: Yeah, so I did the sound tape, then I had a meeting with John Tiffany the director, Julian Horan (casting) and Sonia Friedman. I wish I was more blissfully unaware of who these people were but I was fully aware I was going into a room with these multi Tony award winning directors and I went in and read this stuff for them.

I was the forty something person to have read this script in front of them, and being such a big fan from such a young age, it was an absolute privilege just to get to read it and to be able to turn those pages again and again. But yeah I went in and read, and then I did a movement session, with Steven Hoggett that was a lot of movement stuff that I’m not too keen on. Then after that, four days later, I got a phone call and was offered the part, and moved to London.

So it was quick process, four days later?
Boyle: Yeah it was. Around December, and I had just flown back and I was going back to Belfast to see my family and I got offered the role. I went with my friend who took me home, and I walked into the garden to my dad and went Expelli-f---ing-armous, and he jumped for joy and we started dancing in the house with my sister and my mum.

How quickly after finding out did you go into rehearsals?
Boyle: I left drama school and went straight into rehearsals and it was just a completely different atmosphere to what I was used to. There was like 150 cast, crew and creators constantly just milling about and the rehearsal space is about the size of a football pitch. There’s so much, you had magic tricks and all the technical stuff involved as well, so it was just completely different.

How do you prepare for the role of Scorpius in the beginning and now before you go onto the stage?
Boyle: You just have to look Jack Thorne’s script and it’s so beautifully crafted, it’s such an honor to be the first person to give voice to him. I sort of find that, he’s very posh and he’s grown up in isolation, I began looking up the boys of Eton. There are some documentaries online on the boys at Harrow, and posh upper class English boys and how they speak and how boarding school and isolation is a bit of a factor. Then I would look at, because he’s a pure blood, pure bread dogs and how that would affect their bodies and stuff. Then just the director, he was the guiding light, the captain of the ship leading us all in the right direction.

How is it working with Jack Thorne, the director you mentioned briefly and the crew, have you met J.K. Rowling?
Boyle: Yeah she’s lovely, she is the queen! She’s fab man; she’s just a gorgeous, gorgeous human being. She’s been so generous with letting us take her story and play and experiment in the room with different things, she’s been amazing. Jack Thorne has been incredible; he’s been in the room every single day. He’s had a baby on the way, and that man is the greatest writer of our generation.