Guest Blog: 'I’m The Luckiest Actor In The World': Thomas Aldridge on Celebrating 9 Years of HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD

There’s something reassuring about stepping into a show that is already a success. But similarly, if you’re a catastrophiser like I am, it’s utterly terrifying. Even when I joined the cast of Les Misérables in its 31st year, I thought to myself, “What if I’m the one that manages to close Les Mis!!?” Imagine my fear then, when I landed the role of Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

It was 2016 when I auditioned and the show had only been open for a few months. It was the West End spectacle everyone was talking about. No one had seen anything like it before and it was already being described as one of the most jaw dropping pieces of theatre the West End had ever seen.

Eight of the original cast were going over to Broadway to open the show out there, so they started looking for their West End replacements when the show was still very much in its infancy. When my agent phoned to tell me I had got the job, it was an explosion of different emotions, all of which I had to try and contain as I pushed the trolly up the middle aisle of Aldi. I was going to be in, quite literally, the biggest show on the planet. Playing one of the most loved characters in modern day literature. “What if I’m the one who mucks it all up? What if I ruin the illusion of this character for all of these people who adore him so much?”

At the time, I was to be only the third person ever to portray Ron Weasley. The first of course being Rupert Grint in the films, and the second being Paul Thornley, who had reinvented him so superbly as a forty year old father of two in the original cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

In Paul, I was replacing someone I had admired for a long time. A brilliant actor I am proud to call a friend. His portrayal of Ron was utter perfection. But I knew that I’d have to play Ron very differently. Despite being similar casting, Paul and I are very different and I knew that if I tried to play him the same way, I’d be awful. “But what if I’m awful anyway? What if people leave in the interval because I’m so terrible?” All of these thoughts were running through my head when we started rehearsals back in March 2017.

At that time, with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child still being so new and the original creative team still being so involved, all of us newcomers were given a lot of creative freedom in rehearsals, which was glorious. With characters who have seven books of backstory, there’s an awful lot to draw upon and I was desperate, as his new custodian, to do Ron justice. Of course, the show was still running with the existing cast whilst we were rehearsing. But rehearsing a show like this one is very different to any other I’d worked on before.

Usually you spend the first two weeks sat around a table, pulling apart the text and your character. Even when you get it up on its feet, you’re usually in a studio and don’t even see the stage until tech week. With Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, we were introduced to the stage immediately. We were getting into the Palace Theatre and getting used to the stage whenever there wasn’t a show on.

There’s fire, water, trap doors - all sorts of added dangers to think about. So before you even start learning your lines, you’re taught where to stand and where not to stand, how this trick works and that effect works so that basically you don’t die! The magic in a play about witches and wizards was always going to be impressive, but what they had created on this show was truly next level.

Even now, there are tricks and effects which I watch every night and still don’t understand how they work! The scale is immense. In our show we have 42 wands, over 650 costumes, over 50 wigs, 66 backstage staff and over a thousand lighting and sound cues. Of course all of that spectacle played a part in its record breaking Olivier Awards haul shortly after we started rehearsals. As the show scooped up 9 awards of the 11 it was nominated for, I remember thinking “This is amazing! Look at what I’m coming into!” Closely followed by “Please don’t be the one to muck it all up!”

But I also think that beneath all of those bells and whistles, all of that spectacle, is a story so beautifully created by JK Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, so full of heart and centred around friendship, parenthood, love and trauma that I sometimes wish the audience could get to see it when we run it in the rehearsal studio. No costume, no tricks, no lighting. Just actors telling a story. I truly believe that’s the reason it’s stood the test of time and why it still holds the record for the most Olivier awards ever won for a play, not to mention the countless other awards it’s scooped up in the UK and around the world.

As we celebrate nine years in the West End this week, it’s still one of the biggest, most successful shows in the world, and it's why I am still here playing this wonderful character after eight years! My goodness - the wonderful actors I’ve been lucky enough to work alongside in that time, I can’t even begin to describe. I truly believe I’m the luckiest actor in the world and I like to think - after all that worrying - I did OK.

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child is currently booking at the Palace Theatre until 15 February 2026

Main Photo Credit: Ray Burmiston

Buy Tickets to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Both Parts