On Set With ‘Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’: How Selena Gomez and David Henrie Are Rebooting Disney Magic for a New Generation
Former “Wizards of Waverly Place” co-stars Selena Gomez and David Henrie used to drink wine with Henrie’s wife and ponder what their characters Alex and Justin Russo would be up to today.
“And then at a certain point, I called Selena,” Henrie says, “and I was like, ‘Hey, I want to take this to Disney. Should we do this?’”
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It’s hard to overstate how much “Wizards of Waverly Place,” which ended in 2012 after a four-season run, permeated the tween zeitgeist. The series centered on three siblings — Alex, Justin and Max (Jake T. Austin) — with magical abilities who were vying to become the family wizard. Alex’s spunk, the siblings’ competitive-yet-caring dynamic and winning elements like the “What’s That? A Hat!” jingle all served to captivate young viewers. The show launched Gomez’s multi-hyphenate superstardom and remains a top streaming series for children 6 to 11, per Disney.
Now, thanks to both Gomez’s and Henrie’s wine nights — and Disney’s interest in once again recapturing the show’s magic (pun intended) — audiences will actually see the Russos in the new stage of their lives in the sequel series, “Wizards Beyond Waverly Place.” In time for Halloween, the show will premiere on Oct. 29 on Disney Channel (and stream on Disney+ and Disney on Demand the next day). Henrie stars, Gomez makes guest appearances and both actors are executive producers.
According to Henrie, he and Gomez “wanted to create a show that’s in the original spirit of the first one,” he says. “So you need to bring back familial values. It needs to be funny. It needs to be for kids. We both didn’t want to do an edgy single-cam reimagining of the show. We wanted to do what the original show did great, which was give people heart and humor.”
The multi-cam sitcom depicts a grown-up, now mortal Justin, with a wife and two sons on Staten Island instead of Manhattan. In the premiere, Alex brings Justin a tweenage wizard in need of guidance, whose destiny is somehow tied to the fate of the world. Justin takes the wizard Billie (Janice LeAnn Brown) under his wing, while Alex sets off to figure out just how powerful Billie is to the Wizard World. Executive producers Scott Thomas and Jed Elinoff, who co-created Disney’s “That’s So Raven” reboot “Raven’s Home,” run the revival.
The show is starting off with a cast younger than the original show did, with Justin’s two sons (played by Alkaio Thiele and Max Matenko), Billie and her friend Winter (Taylor Cora) ranging from elementary school-aged kids to pre-teens — and that was intentional. The target audience is “kids six to 11, and their parents,” says Ayo Davis, the president of Disney Branded Television.
“It allows us to have some time to really just treat kids like kids, and tell kids’ stories — because once they get to high school, and you start introducing romance or crushes or anything like that, there’s no going back,” Thomas says. “Having a slightly younger cast really lets us be a little more innocent, and really tell those wide-eyed wonder stories that especially come from mortal kids realizing that there’s magic and that there’s wizards. They’re not jaded. They’re not teenagers.”
“We’ll get there, right?” Elinoff says. “But letting our audience grow up with this cast will ultimately be a more fun way for that generation to experience the show.”
The creative team’s goal is to draw in both the die-hard fans — who may be young parents now — as well as new viewers with no prior “Wizards” knowledge.
“I really wanted it to be 50/50,” Henrie says. “The old fan’s gonna watch it and instantly go, ‘OK, this is something where they’re definitely holding my hand and giving me a big hug.’ But this is really meant for a new generation. We’re passing on the torch. There’s all these plots and throwbacks and references that are carried into the first season and the whole engine of the show, but at the same time, we’re gonna get to share this love with a whole new generation.”
In addition to playing the on-screen dad, Henrie himself has stepped into a mentorship role on set, and protecting the kids is a topic that gets him — along with the rest of the cast and crew — fired up.
“I’m 35 now. I’ve been doing it since I was eight or nine years old, so like 26 years, and I’ve experienced the good, the bad and the ugly, and it was a conscious effort on my part from day one to try to bring all the best experiences forward,” Henrie says. “The whole discussion about pressure and stress and mental health never happened when I was a kid. It was just show up and do your job.”
Henrie also mentions the safeguards Disney has implemented for child actors, such as seminars and therapists. “When I was a kid, we didn’t get any of that stuff. I would have loved it,” he says.
On set, there’s a dialogue coach who helps the kids learn their lines each week. But her duties extend beyond that, as she serves as a conduit between the behind-the-camera crew members and the kids — for many of whom the show is their first big acting gig — pooling notes and delivering them in a comprehensible manner.
Thomas, Elinoff and Henrie are all parents, but one doesn’t need to be to empathize with the kids, Elinoff says. “This came right from our very first conversation with David and Selena: making sure that this experience is a positive one for these kids is the most important thing.”
Of course, acting is a job, and it’s hard to get takes just right, especially with kids. “We’re behind the monitor. We want to make sure that we’re getting everything we need for the show,” Elinoff says. “You do it again and again, and you feel for them, which is why we try to be clear with them why we’re going again, what we want out of them, so that they feel they’re a part of the process.”
In the spirit of making the show enjoyable for the child actors, Henrie has also carried forward some of the behind-the-scenes relics from the O.G. show. During a visit to the set in August, the kids are playing a prank on each other, where they kick someone in the back of their knee who isn’t looking — a game they learned from Henrie. (That prank, Henrie confirms, is one he and Gomez used to do to each other.) Another rebooted tradition: the cast signing the lair, which Gomez and Henrie helped instruct the new actors on during their first days on the set.
“It felt like I was home again,” Gomez says of shooting the reboot. “I’m so happy I got to bring back this childhood gift that I was given to new little ones out there.”
Henrie and Gomez wanted to make the new set collaborative, and a family, like the first one was. Mimi Gianopulos, who plays Justin’s wife Giada, says, “Something that I really admire about David and Selena is they really both lead with kindness, and they’ve really brought that to our set.”
“The focus really is on kindness and on Russos having each other’s backs, and that’s on and off camera,” Gianopulos adds, referencing a catchphrase that was brought forward from the old show.
On screen, much of the old magic is right before the viewer’s eye. The wizards’ lair was recreated to look exactly the same, with the production team having recovered the couches from the original series in a warehouse. The middle school is named after Todd. J Greenwald, a nod to the “Wizards of Waverly Place” creator (who has visited the new set). And when Alex is not on screen, she’s brought up frequently, and Justin even reflects on their brother-sister relationship.
The creative team knew that, because of Gomez’s busy schedule, they were going to get only so much time with her on set. So they created other ways to infuse Alex’s presence into the series. Thomas says: “Alex is still such an influence on Justin, even when she’s not there. That dynamic shaped who Justin is. And when he sees that in Billie, when he sees any sort of Alex, it can be triggering.”
“He’s learning to see his sister in a different way. And he’s gaining a new perspective on Alex,” Elinoff says. Plus, as Justin is training Billie throughout the series, Alex is trying to figure out what’s happening in the Wizard World and why Billie is so significant to it. “There’s a whole other story that’s happening out there with her.”
Bringing the show back now was a calculated decision, according to Davis. “‘Wizards’ is one of the most beloved Disney live-action franchises for kids,” she says. “The love for the series is very much alive. We talk about this show as our North Star.” On top of that, Gomez and Henrie are on board, who are “helping us lean into all the hallmarks of what makes the series so special.”
Thomas echoes the importance of receiving Gomez and Henrie’s support in the revival: “We wanted to go into this knowing that David and Selena really wanted to do this,” he says. “They loved this show. They love the legacy of the show. They loved their experiences on the old show.”
Thomas continues: “I also think that it’s really important to let some time pass from an old show to a reboot or a continuation of that show — otherwise, you’re just making more episodes of the old show. It has to stand on its own two feet.”
Nearly unheard of in the streaming age, “Wizards Beyond” received a 21-episode order for its first season. (For comparison’s sake, “Raven’s Home” had a 13-episode first season, followed by 20+-episode orders for Seasons 2-5 and an 18-episode sixth and final season). “What we know about kids is they have this voracious appetite, and when they lean into something and they start engaging, they continue to consume and watch and watch and watch,” Davis says. And given “Wizards’” huge fan base, Disney felt it was “a great opportunity to give them a healthy volume of episodes so that they could engage on a regular basis” with their families, she adds.
When asked about what success might look like for this revival, Davis brings up projects such as “High School Musical,” “Goosebumps” and “Bluey.” They are all titles that “pierced the cultural zeitgeist,” she says, and launched the careers of actors such as Olivia Rodrigo.
The actor at the front and center of this project, Janice LeAnn Brown, whose role mirrors Gomez’s Alex, might not realize how much her life’s trajectory could change. It’s her first major role (though eagle-eyed fans may recognize her from playing Zendaya’s younger self in two episodes of “Euphoria”). Gomez even provided LeAnn Brown with some advice: “She told me to not get in my head too much about it — to be myself, stay true to myself,” LeAnn Brown says. “No matter what people may say about my appearance, the way I may talk, or whatever, it didn’t matter.”
In many ways, LeAnn Brown feels like the role was made for her. “I’m adopted by my grandparents,” she says. She feels similarities to Billie, who worries she’s not going to be accepted by her “found family,” the Russos. “It really meant a lot to me, because to me, my grandparents are my found family, and my uncle.”
If the six seasons of “Raven’s Home” provide any indicator, more seasons could be coming. “[Raven’s Home’ is] proof that there’s a hunger for it. And that’s the fun of it, right? If you start with a kid who’s 12 when you get them, they’re 17 by the time you’re done with the show,” Elinoff says. Thomas and Elinoff already have a second season planned, and have hopes to expand beyond that as the actors grow up. While “only time will tell” about the show’s future, it’s clear Disney believes “Wizards Beyond Waverly Place” will leave viewers just as spellbound as the original did. “We feel really confident that our audience will love ‘Wizards’’ continuation, as well as the cast led by Janice,” Davis says.
More than anything, what the creative team hopes shines through is the innocence that was at the heart of the original show. One of the writers on the sequel series found an old Facebook post inviting her friends to watch the “Wizards of Waverly Place” finale — with the parenthetical “This is not a sleepover.”
“You’re all coming over to watch the finale, but you have to leave by 8!” Thomas jokes. Adds Elinoff: “It’s such a moment in time.”
Marc Malkin contributed to this story.
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