Harry Potter and the Cursed Child director John Tiffany spoke out about his decades-long friendship with J.K. Rowling, and how he got involved in the London play, set to open next summer.
Tiffany confirmed what Rowling has been saying for days, in that Cursed Child is not a prequel to the Harry Potter books, and that casting has been underway since the start of the year.
He notes that no one famous will be playing the child Harry Potter, and that down the rode he hopes the play will get to tour around all of the U.K., including his home country of Scotland (where he first met Rowling while she was still writing the early Harry Potter books in Edinburgh).
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John Tiffany: “It’s such a relief to be able to talk about this now, especially the fact that it’s not a prequel which was the product of wild speculation. Luckily Jo has more than a few followers on Twitter so she could take control of it.
“My mum has been asking me ‘When can I tell people in Morrison’s?’. So now she can.
“It was my three nephews and my colleague Vicki Featherstone’s two kids who said to me, ‘You have to do this’ when I first spoke to them about it.
“We’ve been working with actors since the beginning of this year, but the characters are the stars of this - so I don’t think we’ll be saying a hot Hollywood actor will be playing Harry Potter.
“I’d love for this to eventually tour to places like Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness as well as around the world. Scotland is present in the Harry Potter stories with characters like McGonagall and the viaduct at Glenfinnan. Obviously we won’t have the viaduct but the country is a place which feels very alive in these stories.