Belfast-born Cursed Child star Anthony Boyle reveals that when he first auditioned for the hit play, he was clueless on which part he was reading for!
Hot on the heels of winning most promising newcomer at the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, actor Anthony Boyle opens up about playing Scoripus Malfoy. He portrays the character in the hit stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. But before production even began, he says he was kept in the dark about which character he was auditioning for!
Scorpius Security
In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, Boyle says when he first read it the script, he was in a locked room with a security guard outside. Apparently the production team wanted to keep things under tight wraps.
“At the time we were just reading for ‘lead boy’,” he says. “And then we finally got to read the script, and I’m very dyslexic, and it took three hours to read two scripts.”
Despite the wait, he dug into those scripts, and at first imagined he was playing an entirely different character.
"I was expecting it to be about Sirius Black for some reason, I don’t know why, and I thought I was going to play a young Sirius Black. I was like, ‘Who is this dude?’"
Instead, he discovered Scorpius, or Draco Malfoy’s son. He describes Malfoy as “a comedic character at the start, a bit of a clown”. He found he was able to connect with the character on an emotional level.
Ticket Troubles
The show has become such a hit at the Palace theater that many of the shows remain sold out. Boyle says people are always on the prowl for tickets.
"My dad will ring me and say people have stopped him in the street, people are pulling up in cars in the center of Belfast going, ‘Give us tickets to the show.’"
Next: Daniel Radcliffe Rumored to Be Considering Harry Potter and the Cursed Child