The lights focus on the stage. As an actor, you stand amid a crowd of more than 2,000 people as the spotlight finds you. You hear the audience erupt in sounds of applause, filling the theater, which makes your heart race a hundred times the speed. The dedication, the work and the endless hours of training all fade into obscurity as you’re on the stage of Broadway, living a dream you never thought was possible.
For Broadway actor Alex Serino, his journey to taking the stage was a rigorous path full of immense challenges that tested his skills and resilience along the way.
Every actor reaches a realization when they decide to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. Serino finds his motivation within the support of his family, he said.
“My grandmother, she lived down the street from me growing up, and before all these auditions, I would go down the street to her, and I’d give her the sheet music, and she played on piano, helping me sing,” Serino said.
The support of Serino’s grandmother encouraged him to pursue acting, he said.
“I did my first ever musical, but I did props in it. My whole life, my family, my parents and my teachers always said I should be an actor,” Serino said. “I auditioned for the spring musical that year, which was ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ and I got a call back for [the lead] but I didn’t [land the role], but I did get to play the plant puppeteer. Then right after that, I did my first play, and I was the lead in it.”
As a student, Serino’s passions for acting and teaching intersected in the Emerson College Theatre Education and Performance program.
“It would give me the skills to act, but also the skills to teach my students how to act,” he said
For his role as Albus Potter on “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” Serino auditioned three times before landing the part in year six of the Broadway production.
“I was so young and hadn’t had a ton of acting training, but I got a Broadway audition which was awesome,” Serino said. “I look at each [audition] as a success and never at any of them like a failure. If I didn’t get the part, I just always saw it as a cool experience.”
Although he did not land the role in 2022, Serino received an invitation a year and a half later to audition again for the touring production of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”
“I did a tape for [the touring production] of ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,’ and went in about four times, where I did movement calls, [which is] like ensemble building, and one dance,” Serino said.
While he did not book the role then, the process was challenging but valuable, as his audition stood out to casting directors which established a professional relationship that would later lead to his eventual booking.
“This is my first time doing something as big as this. I had no expectations. “[Although] nothing happened, I took away the feeling of ‘oh my gosh, I got pretty far in this process. That’s awesome.’ [Later on] I reached out to the casting director, and he said to me ‘you’re great and we’re just gonna keep you in mind for the future.’”
Flash forward eight months, the casting for Broadway’s “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” in New York came about, allowing him the opportunity to audition again.
“I got an email from the casting director, and he asked if I could come straight to callbacks for Broadway,” Serino said. I went in and I had a straight week of callbacks. I was [auditioning] for 20 minutes and the scenes I had to do were ‘Hogwarts Express 2’ and the blanket scene between Harry and Albus.”
For Serino, the saying “third time’s a charm” proved true, as he received the news the following day that he booked the role.
“I started driving out of New York to go back home to Massachusetts,” he said. “I then got a call [from the casting director] … he [said] ‘Hey, Alex, I’m calling to unfortunately tell you that you’re gonna have to move to New York City because you’re gonna be playing Albus Potter on Broadway.’ I was like, ‘wow’ and pulled over to immediately call my mom.”
The bond between Serino and his co-star Erik Christopher Peterson, who played Scorpius Malfoy, was a friendship full of humor.
“There is this funny memory of me and Erik, and this is going to be one of our favorite memories of this entire process. It was places for the show, and we’re down in our dressing room, and I’m messing with him.
We have a shower in our dressing room, so I was just poking my head out and messing with him, and then I accidentally bumped the faucet on the shower when places had just been called. I’m in full costume and wig, and he just saw me freaking out, and I immediately turned it off, and made such a loud screech, and we could not stop laughing.”
Although Serino’s run in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” has come to an end, his journey is not over; in fact, it has only just begun.
Looking toward the future, Serino said he’s “open to anything” with his goals in TV and film, but a “fun dream” of his is to be in a video game.
“I like to act and to tell stories. A dream of mine is to be in another Broadway show and originate something,” Serino said.
