Red's Alfred Enoch on Returning to the London Stage, Talking Theater with How to Get Away with Murder Co-Star Viola Davis & More

Alfred Enoch hit the big time as Wes on ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder and played Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter films, but the fast-rising screen star is returning to the stage to join Alfred Molina in the London reboot of John Logan’s Tony-winning play Red, which starts performances May 4 at Wyndham’s Theatre—closing in on nine years after its Donmar Warehouse premiere. The hugely engaging Enoch spoke one day after rehearsals about following on from Tony and Olivier Award-winning actor Eddie Redmayne in the role of Ken and why he’s unlikely, at least for now, to relocate to L.A.

How does it feel being the newbie in the room, alongside a co-star, Alfred Molina, and a creative team who made Red a London and Broadway hit? [The play won six 2010 Tony Awards.]
I can’t really evaluate our show in the context of the last production since I never saw it, but this feels like something new. It hasn’t felt like a room where there has been a prescribed endpoint. Everyone’s been bold enough to say, “You know, we’re prepared to see where this goes,” and according to them it’s quite different—which is a nice thing to hear.

Doesn’t it help that you comprise half the cast?
Exactly. This can’t really be the same production when 50 percent of the cast is different.

How does the creative team distinguish by name between you and Alfred Molina in the rehearsal room?
Luckily, he’s Fred and I’m Alfie. We haven’t yet had to descend into numbers—Alfreds 1 and 2—in order to keep our identities separate.

Has your awards-laden predecessor, Eddie Redmayne, offered guidance or support?
I don’t think Eddie has any way of reaching me, but I’m hoping that’s not just cool indifference [laughs]. It must be funny to see something that you were in and even stranger when 50 percent of the cast [Alfred Molina, playing the venerable artist Mark Rothko] is the same as when you did it. I’m just excited for everyone to come and see it; it’s such a great play.

How did you get the offer?
I’m half-Brazilian and was in Brazil visiting friends and family and was about to fly back when an email came from my agent that said RED in big letters. Immediately, my heart skipped a beat: to get to work with Fred and Michael [Grandage, the director] was such an exciting prospect.

What do you make of your character of Ken, Rothko’s (fictional) assistant in his New York studio in the late 1950s?
What’s interesting is that you have this figure who’s known historically—i.e. Rothko—and then this “other,” who is Ken, or that’s kind of how it feels at the beginning. He’s something new: a young man trying to find his way initially from Rothko while also absorbing things from elsewhere, which brings conflict into the room. There’s a freedom, too, that comes from playing a character who isn’t historical.

Do you connect with the art world of the play?
Well, my brother trained as a photographer and we will go to museums together. And before I had my recall for this, I went and sat in the Tate Modern with the Seagram Murals [one of Rothko’s most famous commissions], and it was interesting to see the extent to which my relationship with the play informed my viewing of them. We’re actually going back this week as a company to have another look.

How does it feel to be returning to the stage after considerable amounts of TV and film work abroad?
I managed to do King Lear at the Royal Exchange in Manchester between two seasons of How to Get Away with Murder, but what’s especially nice here is to be doing theater in a place that allows me to be home for a stretch. At no point do I want to look at my career and think, “Theater is something I’m not doing.” It feels always like such a priority for me.

When you were filming the series in L.A., would you and Viola Davis talk about theater between takes?
[Laughs] I would, you know! I’d say to her, “Have you ever played so-and-so?”, and I remember telling her that I thought she would make a fantastic Mrs. Alving in Ghosts. I actually felt as if theater was missing from my L.A. life so corralled people into a little Shakespeare reading group: that was fun!

Now that the show is over, have you felt any pressure to relocate for keeps to L.A.?
Obviously, I’ve got a team out in the States who send all sorts of exciting things my way, so I don’t really feel as if I’m losing out on any of that by being here. I actually got my job in How to Get Away with Murder while appearing onstage at the Donmar [in Coriolanus]. Besides, I love London too much: this is where I was born and raised.

Was it inevitable that you would be an actor given that your father [William Russell] was?
Certainly seeing him as the King of France in Henry V at Shakespeare’s Globe [in a 1997 production starring Mark Rylance] was one of the things that did it for me. I just remember an energy that I thought can’t be replicated, either as an audience member or as a performer.

Has your director, Michael Grandage, been humming the hits from Frozen, given that he has just come off directing the Disney musical on Broadway?
Not yet now that you mention it; I’m quite disappointed [laughs]!

Maybe at one performance he will replace the Gluck aria used in the show with a version of “Let It Go”?
If that happens, thank goodness in that scene we are facing upstage.