David Henrie is going back to the show where it all started!
The 35-year-old is reprising his role as Justin Russo in the highly anticipated show, “Wizards Beyond Waverly Place.”
The show takes the now-father of three back to his old stomping ground at Disney, where Justin is picking up his wand to help wizard-in-training Billie, after his sister Alex Russo, who is played by Selena Gomez, taps him for some help.
David told Access Hollywood that he’s been talking to Selena about what their characters would be up to for years, but the idea of creating the show came naturally.
“There was no, ‘It should be now, let’s come up with an idea,’ or anything like that,” he said. “Selena and I just hung out over the years, we’ve spent so much time together and when we’re hanging out, we reminisce on old memories. Sure enough, the topic of our characters would come up, and we would just joke around about where our characters would be now.”
But one day when they were talking, something changed.
“At a certain point I said, ‘You know Selena, I’ll kind of formalize this, why don’t you and I take that into Disney and let’s talk about it and see what they think, see if they think it’s a good idea,’” he said. “So, we did. They bought off on it, we started developing it and now years later, it’s a lot of hard work, but we got it to a place that I am very confident the original fans will feel like they’ve been given a real warm hug but they’re invited to invite a younger person to watch the show with them.”
When it came to grabbing his wand and portraying Justin again, David admitted it “should have been way harder than it was.”
“Aside from the pressure, the actual doing it was very effortless,” he told Access. “The second they said action, Selena and I were just like, bang, right back to where we were, like we didn’t miss a beat. We both have matured, we’re now older versions of ourselves, but we didn’t miss a beat. The spark is still there. And we felt it, afterwards, we were like, ‘We freaking did it.’”
“Wizards Beyond Waverly Place” premieres with two episodes Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Disney Channel and streams on Disney+ the next day.