From New York to Malta and back, Thomas is still discovering his “corner of the sky.”
If you’ve followed Matthew James Thomas‘s Broadway career, you know he’s no stranger to coming of age stories. He made his Broadway debut as Peter Parker in Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, which, buried with the worldwide controversy, was a simple story about a teenager discovering his powers. After that, he starred in Diane Paulus’s seminal circus-based revival of Pippin, as the young prince struggling to find his “corner of the sky.” And now, a decade later, he’s the leading man of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, dealing with life’s scars and a son struggling live up to his dad’s historic reputation.
Here, Thomas draws parallels between each character he’s played, reflecting on their shared themes of identity. But don’t get him wrong: even though he’s embraced dad mode on stage, he’s still very much a kid navigating his own corner of the sky.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
How’s Harry treating you?
It’s great. I haven’t stopped since…I don’t know if you know, but we were doing this Stephen Schwartz concert in Malta all last year with the 70-piece Malta Philharmonic Orchestra. And I was shooting a television show in Toronto, The Accused, and I had auditioned for Harry, because I was finally the right age.
All of that happened at once. They changed the dates and scared me for a minute because I didn’t think I was going to be able to make the first week of rehearsals for Harry. Knowing how particular they are about the rehearsal schedule for a show as technical as it is, I thought there was no way it would happen. But they gave me that week and a half off to finish up the concert, and we got there, and it was crazy.
Before we go into Harry, tell me about the concert.
It was terrific, one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done in my life, and one of the most hair-raising. The directing aspect was more people management than anything else. But getting the program right I owe almost completely to Keri René Fuller, my partner, who practically came up with the set list all by herself. Stephen arrived two days before the concert, and at the last minute, we brought in John Owen Jones, who I’d grown up admiring as Jean Valjean. We used two or three vocalists from Malta, as well. Itt brought the house down. It was really special. I had two hours of sleep and lost my voice. The next morning, I woke up, had breakfast, jumped on the plane, and came back.
I guess Harry Potter was a cooling down period after that.
It kind of was, in a way. And not, because this is a new version of the play, so it was like building the play from scratch again. Getting it to work in this shorter form was an interesting challenge.
And you’re the guy, which isn’t exactly a small role.
That’s right. Finally. When I was auditioning for the films, I think I was more in the running for Malfoy.
I didn’t realize you went out for the movies as a kid.
Yeah, I’m right around their age and I was doing a lot of tv and film as a kid in the UK. They filmed all the Harry Potters in Leavesden, which is right around the corner from where I grew up, so I would see them all.
As a kid going out for the Harry Potter movies and not getting then, does this realize a childhood dream come true?
I don’t know if I’d take it that far. What’s interesting is that, from the outside looking in on a character, you think you have an idea of them. And then when you get to play them, you really learn what they’re going through.
Harry is very different than I expected. In the films, it used to annoy me when he wouldn’t tell people that things were going wrong. He won’t say “Oh, my scar is hurting.” In the way that it’s been conceived by Jack Thorne and John Tiffany and J.K. Rowling for this production, he sort of does. He learned the lesson, but he finds it very difficult.
I think that it’s a really accurate depiction of what it feels like as an adult. You sort of know what you’re not good at, and yet, very often, you keep doing the same things you would do as a kid, you just know you’re doing them now.
I have the image in my head of you jumping through the hoop at the beginning of Pippin, and flying around as Spider-Man. You’re still doing stunts well over a decade later.
I know. God, that was crazy. I can’t believe I did that. Pippin is one of those things that’s just impossible to top. Spider-Man, for whatever the theater community thought about the show, is a very moving story about finding your own responsibility and losing a person very dear to you, and how you often need to go through tragic things to figure yourself out.
I don’t think people expect that of Harry Potter. I think they expect to see a spectacle, and they’re not going to be let down, but as you know, the folly and glee are followed by serious, deep scenes. It’s a father-son story, it’s a coming-of-age story. It’s a powerful piece when it comes to that, which I didn’t expect to think about when I was auditioning.
But hearing the audience gasp every night — sometimes, it gets so loud that you can barely focus on the scene. And sometimes it’s a pin-drop audience, which I love because it really feels like a play. I still think Harry Potter has the best illusions and the best magic in town. I just feel ever more grateful for being a part of a production of that scale. It’s super easy to get lost in the idea that I’m doing this eight shows a week, but when I just open my eyes and look at what’s in front of me, I think “This is pretty cool.”