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Laughter echoes from a Los Angeles, California, soundstage on a Friday afternoon in September, as the cast of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place works on nailing a midseason cold open.
“Ow! Ow!” yells the dialogue coach from behind the camera, hyping up the young cast as they prepare for another take. She’s just delivered another round of notes, asking the kids to change their inflection here, try a new line there — and most importantly, have fun while doing it.
After a few takes, things start to click into place, and the magic, so to speak, is palpable.
“That is absolutely the best feeling in the world,” Jed Elinoff, who showruns with Scott Thomas, tells Deadline of watching the cast get into their groove. “There is no place quieter than a soundstage when a joke dies, and there is no place better than a sound stage when it hits and you know that it is funny.”
On most sound stages, a hush falls over the set when the cameras begin rolling. Any noise is met with glares and gestures to quiet down. But not this one. There’s no studio audience for the day’s shoot, so the crew is filling in with boisterous feedback after every punch line.
“Anytime I’ve done single-camera or when I’ve directed, I laugh out loud, and then everyone looks at me and they’re like, ‘Shut up. We’re rolling right now. You can’t do that,’” star and executive producer David Henrie says. “But I’m trained to laugh out loud, because we do in sitcoms. So it’s such a unique medium to get that immediate reaction as an actor.”
Unlike the crew, Henrie, who is reprising his role as Justin Russo for the upcoming spinoff of the Disney Channel classic, can’t laugh as his on-screen son Alkaio Thiele delivers a line back to him with perfect comedic timing. After all, he’s got to remain in character, too. But, you can almost make out the glint in his eye as he watches the young actor succeed.
“It definitely sets off something in you,” Henrie says of watching the kids find their rhythm on set.
Wizards Beyond Waverly Place follows an adult Justin Russo, who has chosen to lead a normal, mortal life with his family. Of course, it wouldn’t be a reboot of the iconic franchise without Selena Gomez, who guest stars as Alex Russo.
In the first episode, audiences learn that Alex is looking for Justin to come out of wizarding retirement to mentor a young wizard named Billie, played by Janice LeAnn Brown, in an effort to safeguard the future of the Wizard World.
Henrie and Gomez spent many nights brainstorming a Wizards return long before it ever happened. But, stepping back on set was “kind of like living a dream,” Henrie remembers.
“It was kind of surreal, but it’s a moment I’ve been so desperately craving, because I so want the original fan, but a whole newfound fan base, to experience the very loving, familial themes that vivified the original show,” he added.
Elinoff and Thomas remember “so much energy” those first few days on set. The pair previously worked on Raven’s Home, which rebooted another beloved Disney Channel franchise, but they still say they’ve never experienced that type of excitement around shooting a pilot.
“When we had our audience show, we had so many people on set that wanted to come see it,” Elinoff said. “We were absolutely at capacity in every possible space in that building. The audience was full. We had two more sets full of people just sitting there wanting to be near it.”
It goes without saying that there was “a lot of pressure to try and recapture that magic” of the original series with this new outing. Luckily, once the cameras started rolling, it was like Henrie and Gomez had never said goodbye to those characters in the first place.
“He’s so easy to make fun of,” Gomez teased as to why their chemistry “naturally came back.”
Watching that unfold gave Elinoff and Thomas the chance to breathe a sigh of relief, finally, knowing that this reboot was really working.
“We didn’t grow up watching the show, so intending to approximate it, there was an incredibly good feeling when our original jokes that were in the script were like, perfect Alex Russo jokes, or perfect Justin Russo jokes, and you were like, ‘Oh yes.’ That’s a really good feeling,” Thomas said.
While there was plenty of free-spirited, fun energy on set during Deadline’s September visit, there was also a bit of nervousness in the air as they filmed that cold open, because Wizards of Waverly Place Todd Greenwald was also in the building. The cast and crew were hoping to impress, knowing the weight they carry by continuing such a beloved franchise.
Henrie called the moment “very meaningful,” especially because Justin is now a principal at Greenwald Middle School, which is named as an homage to the creator. To share space with him on set again was “like having your dad visit your new house. He gave you life, and it’s like, what’s he gonna think of this new life I’ve established?”
Luckily, there was nothing to fret about. In fact, Greenwald gave just about the best stamp of approval he could’ve when, as the scene got going, he broke out into a grin, chuckling as the jokes flew around. That, everyone agrees, was a moment of great satisfaction.
“We’re sort of step parents, meeting the dad for the first time and going, ‘Hey, we are raising your kids. I hope we’re doing a good job,’” Thomas said. “But he couldn’t have been nicer. He couldn’t have been more gracious. We really appreciate that…It was very rewarding when we got through the cold open and he was laughing.”
That afternoon, with production more than halfway complete, it was clear that the kids, many of whom are series regulars for the first time, had begun to really settle into their roles. They took notes with ease, bounced ideas off the showrunners, and cracked jokes of their own in between takes.
Of the atmosphere on set, Brown says: “I think for me, it just really makes me feel relieved that people have my back and that we have each other’s back. It genuinely feels like a family. We don’t judge each other. We help each other.”
Henrie takes great pride in how the young cast has blossomed over the course of these dozen or so episodes, since their experience was top of mind when bringing the series to life.
“In my 26 years being in this business, I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. So any production that I am either directing or producing or I have a hand in controlling, I seek to bring the best experiences forward,” he told Deadline. “To me, the best cultures I’ve seen are ones that have a servant mentality, which is humility, hope and hard work leading the way all the way through. So we are here to serve the audience. This isn’t about you or me or any of us. It’s about something bigger than us.”
Every day on set, he seeks to remind the cast to “check our egos at the door” and remember the goal is to make people, especially kids, laugh.
“There’s a lonely kid sitting on a couch somewhere who can really use a laugh. So whatever struggles we’re all going through right now, let’s leave them at the door, and let’s make that kid laugh. That’s as simple as that, right?” he said.
Reminiscing on her own Disney Channel experience, Gomez says it was “everything to me.” She adds that she tried to, in some ways, be a mentor for Brown as she navigated this adventure, hoping to be “someone [Brown] turns to.”
“I never had a me when I was growing up,” Gomez says.
Brown says that the biggest reminder she’s gotten from her seasoned castmates is to “stay true to myself and that it doesn’t matter what other folks may say to me, because at the end of the day, I’m doing what is my passion.”
The actress, along with her other young co-stars, bring a freshness to a series that will feel comfortingly familiar to any millennials who grew up watching Justin and Alex’s exploits on Wizards of Waverly Place.
Elinoff and Thomas, as well as Henrie and Gomez in their capacity as executive producers, have worked to weave together the perfect combination of nostalgia for fans of the original series with new, engaging stories and characters for a younger generation of viewers.
Very quickly, audiences will get to see the Russo family lair, where Alex, Justin and Max (Jake T. Austin) learned everything they know. It has been painstakingly recreated for Wizards Beyond, even including some of the original set pieces.
Speaking of Max, OG fans are surely wondering when the third Russo sibling will make an appearance.
Henrie and the showrunners remain tight-lipped on if or when that’s happening, though Henrie says that many of the original cast members have visited set and, while not all of them will be showing up on screen this season, “we definitely want the entire cast to come back in this show when it makes sense.”
Henrie confirms Season 1 will feature the return of Justin’s parents, played by David DeLuise and Maria Canals-Barrera. Those cameos make sense for this first season, given that Justin would likely seek advice from his parents when it comes to re-entering the Wizard World and mentoring a young wizard.
The showrunners agree, they want to ensure that they aren’t capitulating to nostalgia and instead are ensuring that the guest stars “fit into the arcs that we’re creating for our regular characters.”
“We don’t want to fill the first season with just cameo, cameo, cameo, because we’re trying to let the new kids shine,” Thomas explained. “We’re also trying to tell one overarching story for the season, which is really about Justin getting his confidence back as a wizard and a teacher, and Billie realizing that she has a home here with the Russos.”
Fingers crossed, they say, there will be multiple seasons to give everyone an opportunity to return to the iconic franchise. According to Henrie, there’s already so much more story to tell past these initial 19 episodes.
“I can’t give away too much, so I’ll speak very generally, but the first season is really a prequel for the second season, which is where the show really begins,” he teased. “We’re very much wanting to have a show that could go on for many seasons…the second season is where things really, really pop off.”
Wizards Beyond Waverly Place premieres on Disney Channel Tuesday night, followed by eight episodes available on Disney+ starting Wednesday.
