Tony Talk: Best Play, HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD

You won Best Play. How excited are you

I'm very, very excited. I feel slightly odd, to be honest. It feels like this has all happened to someone else

And somehow I'm sort of this corpse being dragged behind this other person

But yeah, no, it's amazing. This has happened to you so well deserved. You were holding a Tony Award. Is it all surreal

Yeah, really, really, really surreal. Like standing up on that stage and just, you know

and being surrounded by all those wonderful people that made the show with us and just standing there and going, we're the best play

I mean, it's nuts and wonderful and brilliant, and I'm so grateful. It's such a phenomenal play

Just tell me, when did you first fall in love of the world of Harry Potter

Well, Sonia said something that really stuck with me, which is that she read the books to her stepchildren

John read them to his nephews. I read them to myself. From the moment these books came out, I was in love

and I hope once all this is over I can go back to being a Potterhead

and still be part of that community because I just think the books are

ridiculously special and it's just an honour to have worked in any way on part of the Wizarding World

I started this 25 years ago. Hold this up. I want you to spin it

but tell me what comes to mind when you spin it. Oh my gosh. And if you spin from this, it spins really fast

Okay, this side. Okay, so. Matic. There we are. That's what comes to mind, magic. It's all magical. It's wonderful

Where will it live? In my telly room. Yeah, because no one goes in there. That's just my room and my wife's room

And then it will just be for us, not for... Do you know what I mean? Like you know I don really like showing off and all that kind of stuff but it will mean something to us So yeah You heard your name and you all started up there What was going through your mind Okay several things That we had no time

that I knew that I had a really heavy dress. I wasn't going to fall over

Were my beads all going to fall apart? Because they had earlier in the evening, my dress was falling apart in my seat

So I was surrounded by beads. I was thinking, please don't fall over

and don't all fall apart. So that was my first worry. Second was relief

Third was you stand at that mic and you suddenly look up and you see

I don't know how many thousands of faces. The speech you had prepared goes out of your head

And then you have to start speaking. So that all happened in, I don't know, 10 seconds

80 more to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, so yes, and so then I realized I had to pray see my speech, but I didn't get in half the things I wanted to say, to be honest

We have something at Broadway World we do every year. We have everybody tuned in to have the winners thank the people they should have thanked on stage

So go right ahead at Broadway World. Okay, so I didn't get the time to thank our creative team

our associates, the stage management, the crew, the technicians, the wardrobe, the wigs, the makeup artists, the operators

the specialists, the front of house, ATG for delivering us this remarkable theatre

And did I say the cast? Yes, and of course the cast

The 40 plus strong cast who are phenomenal Um and I didn get to say i miss you my mum who died um

who would be so proud of me right now because this is a play about family and it's a play about grief

actually and so had this have really been my moment i'd have talked about

mom and legacy because the plays about legacy how you deal with the legacy how you deal with

the hand you've been given and i would have liked to have said thanks to my mom for dealing me the

hand i've got you know she's looking down on you tonight she's probably looked down on you for this

whole entire project you put together you have brought so much love to new york i told you that

the day i left the show i said just to look at that audience of what you have brought over here

has changed so much on Broadway and the people you're bringing to the theatre

I hope so. I mean, I tried to touch on that in my speech, but about the community we're building of fans who are becoming theatre-goers

and theatre-goers who are becoming fans. And the hope that in generations to come, people will look back on this moment

and say the first play I saw was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

and that got me to see theatre time and time again. 26 years ago I started the spinning Tony

Hold it up. Everyone's copying me. Yeah, of course they have. But I ask you, what are you thinking when you spin it

Give it a big spin because you're good at this. It comes to mind when you spin it

I think it does. I mean, I think it's, one of the things I love most about it is that last moment in the show is a call to action Resort of the citizens Yeah Everything that to come You a Tony Award winner Best play how excited are you it very exciting it very exciting who knew but it wonderful is it all surreal when you hear your

names and you start up there what's going through your mind you sort of you sort of the world sort

of freezes for just a minute and what we really wanted was the chance for jack thorne to speak

and unfortunately jack got cut off but which is a bit unfortunate because he's the playwright after

all. But you're in a sort of zone, you don't quite know what's going on. You're on autopilot

Is there someone you forgot to thank? Because at Broadway World we're doing this thing for everybody to tune in tomorrow to watch all the winners thank the people they should have thanked

on stage. When I wanted to thank and I got the chance to thank was Jack Thorne. But sadly he

didn't get a chance to talk. So I mean, when did you first fall in love with the world of Harry

Potter? It's changed the world with the books, the films, and now your beautiful play. Well the

exciting thing is that the books introduced a lot of children to reading, and hopefully

the play will introduce a lot of kids and a lot of new audiences to the theater. So that's

one of the most exciting things about the play. What I love are all the different types of grandparents, parents, kids, young kids, everyone

is coming to see this show. I know, it's extraordinary, it's cross-generational, and funnily, our core audience are in their

late 20s, early 30s, and there are audience members at that age coming with their parents

It's a great experience. I started the spinning 25 years ago on this carpet

I want you to hold this high. This is all your fault. What I'm going to ask you is when you hold it high and spin it

tell me what comes to mind when you spin it. All right, you've got to give it a spin and tell me what comes to mind

It could be anything. My children. Where will your Tony live? It will live in my office, actually, along with my other Tony