Touring the 'Wizards Beyond Waverly Place' Set With David Henrie

Hi AD, what is going on?

I am David Henrie,

and I cannot wait to show you around our set.

So, let's begin.

[upbeat music]

We are here in the wizard's lair from the original show.

This was built exactly to spec,

and they even found some of the original furniture

from the original show in prop houses all over LA.

The first time that I walked in here,

I hadn't been here since I was 21,

I'm 35 now, does that make you feel old?

It makes me feel even older.

It's kinda like if you were to go into

your childhood bedroom untouched,

all these feelings hit you,

you don't know what to make of it.

[bear exploding]

Oh boy.

When you first see this set, it's a massive moment.

Justin walks through the mirror

and he walks into this set and it's covered in cobwebs,

and Selena walks through at the same time,

so it's kind of a pivotal moment early on in the show

when we dust this thing off

and we start putting it back to use.

The fun part is there's two exits.

One exit is a mirror,

the mirror goes to our house,

and then this door right here goes to the sub shop,

the original sub shop from Wizards of Waverley Place.

[bright music]

This set was so well documented.

It was originally designed by Michael Hines.

Online we found so many images

and then once the set dressing started working,

it was amazing how many pieces

that they found from the original set.

This is where Justin would teach,

so this is all built to spec.

And then you have the Wizard World Portal,

so it's a big portal that goes off into the Wizard World.

Normally, they smoke it up and they make it all mysterious.

[dramatic music]

And then, you know, we got our,

these are like herbs, you gotta spice it up a little bit.

But you know, we got our little upside down herb garden

and, yeah, you know, just creepy stuff.

Who knows what you're doing with that?

Camera hole, very important camera hole.

They put cameras through there and they shoot us.

Don't have those in your house.

So probably one of the biggest moments in the show

is when Justin gets his wand back,

it's kind of like picking up your lightsaber again.

It's huge.

And then he taps on a brick,

the brick comes out

and then he pulls this out from the wall.

Probably my favorite prop.

[electrics buzzing]

[vibrant music]

One of the big things to me

when we were designing these sets was, what is the couch?

The couch is a staple in every sitcom, right?

And in the original Wizards of Waverly Place,

if you remember,

there was a very iconic orange couch.

So we wanted to do a similar color,

something that paid homage to the original.

In the original show,

the couch was so great that Selena and I

would frequently take naps on it during lunch.

And I have to say,

this couch also has that same magic.

Surprise.

[audience cheering]

We felt putting the mirror next to the bathroom

was a really good idea because

you actually need to go in and out of this thing,

so you need a physical hole to go into,

and then you have your bathroom door exit right here.

There's a little bathroom here that we actually did dress,

I don't know if we'll ever use it, we haven't yet,

but we have a bathroom there.

And it's really awkward when like

you have multiple characters going through this mirror.

'cause you'll have like seven people back there sometimes,

and it gets a little tight.

I send thee to the nowhere zone.

[audience laughing]

Wizards Beyond Waverly Place

takes place in Staten Island.

And Justin made a strategic move out of home

to Staten Island to become vice principal of a school.

Staten Island, you know, is not too far from Waverly Place

where the original show took place.

He met a wonderful woman,

settled down, had a couple kids.

I think we have a three bedroom.

And little sitting nook here,

we can do a little reading

or a little changing from coming out of our backyard there.

And color was a big deal,

when we were originally designing this,

we wanted to make it feel as elevated as possible,

almost like we were an adult sitcom,

just with a little more color.

And by the way, you might hear some noises,

this is a working set,

people are building things and off doing their jobs

so you might hear some things.

I might have to get quiet at one point if they record.

Yeah, they're in their, you know, mid thirties.

So I wanted our set dressing

to be from places like West Elm and CB2 and flea markets.

My favorite Easter egg,

and David didn't know about it,

was the painting that was done of Waverly Place.

So this is a total throwback and I wasn't expecting this,

I just showed up on set and I saw that

and it literally made me a little bit emotional,

a little bit, felt my Adam's apple dip a little bit.

This is the sub shop from Wizards of Waverly Place

where I've spent so many, so many hours

and years of my life in this very set.

[lively music]

We wanted to show a home

that was not only on Staten Island,

but also reflected this young family.

We found some architectural precedent

of what the homes look like.

There's some brick homes,

but we really like these wood siding

and we thought that was a little more familiar,

warm, comfortable, accessible.

So this is my porch,

couple chairs here for me and the wife

when the kids are in bed to sit out here,

watch a sunset, you know,

watch the cars go by,

watch whatever, you know, birds chirp,

maybe have a water,

have a water with my wife,

and, you know, just watch things.

[upbeat music]

All right, so welcome to the kitchen.

The kitchen is another staple in every sitcom

since the beginning of time,

so it was a really important one for us to get right.

Fun fact, all the pots and pans are from Our Place,

from The Selena Gomez Collection.

So you know, we take care of our own.

We're repping.

But don't you miss it?

You know, teaching wizards.

Pfft, no, I don't even think about it every day.

[audience laughing]

When they're actually using it as a practical kitchen

or they're acting,

you have to turn their bodies towards camera.

In that specific kitchen,

we already knew like the age of the house,

so we wanted to have some of the old kitchen,

and then, the Russos, the young family.

I wanted to also reflect that.

So that island is very modern.

Downstage, I allowed for us to see some of the artifacts

so that we understand the family.

We also brought in that little snack station

so that the kids, when they walk in,

they're completely looking at camera

while they're taking their snacks.

So these are all real appliances

and they have stuff in them,

but they're not on because they make noises and whatnot.

But we have stuff in them for when we shoot.

If you open up the door, you see there's texture and things.

Last week, we had to do an episode

where my character drank

this farm fresh milk from the carton,

and then shoot it into the sink over there.

And we had massive gentleman's bets going on

behind camera with the crew if I would make it or not.

It was a long shot, I mean,

from here to the sink, it's a long shot.

Let see if I can make it right now, you ready?

Do you think I'm gonna make it in the comment section?

Yeah, I like that, that was a yes.

Nothing but sink!

That would've been really bad if I missed that,

that would've been really bad.

[vibrant music]

Let's go to the backyard.

So this is our little slice of paradise,

you know, we're in Staten Island,

houses are kind of crammed in there,

and this is what we got.

We got a nice little garden here,

another place for my wife and I to sit

and have a drink of water where we sit right here

and enjoy our water and get a little sun, you know,

get a little Staten Island sun.

In terms of making an exterior set look believable

because it's actually inside,

a lot of it has to do with the aging,

the paint job on the walls, the fence, the floor.

This is Staten Island, we're in New York, they get weather.

I'm a big fan of live greens, having trees.

We have an amazing greensman, we love Pete,

he brings in all the trees and all the plants.

We have a great little planter there

that we kind of change out which plants are in there.

We really just try to bring real nature into the stage

so that it really does feel like you're outside,

even though you're not.

[lively music]

Welcome to school where Justin Russo is principal.

We wanted to create something colorful,

something that felt youthful,

that felt maybe real and relatable,

but something fun and inviting to the eye.

When I first walked on set

and it was like day one for me,

I remember I go, Oh yeah, where's my locker?

And then I went, Wait a minute, I'm the principal,

I'm old, 35 years old,

I don't have a locker, I have an office.

I bet if I open one of these lockers,

there'll be something in it.

I don't know, but I'm gonna go for it.

Ah, [chuckles] they're good.

Let's see another one.

Wow, they're really good,

they are really good, they don't miss a beat.

Now there's no way they did absolutely all of 'em.

Let's see.

They did them all, they did them all.

[upbeat music]

The goal for me with the school's layout

was basically give them ins and outs.

I've worked with these executive producers before,

they have crazy imaginations

and they love for a lot of shenanigans to happen

in the school hallway,

so just making sure they had a lot of places

for people to go.

[cool music]

So this is the principal's office

and it has an actual door

that leads into the school to connect those dots.

And then, you come on in

and you are at the principal's office.

This is Justin's office.

This is a big deal, right here, it's all this,

this is what it's all about.

Principal Russo, that's what it's all about,

that's what Justin's been gunning for his whole life.

Oh wow.

Did you feel the power dynamics just change,

the second I sat down everything changed?

In his room, he has some pictures that are important to him.

Then, of course,

Justin doesn't use his phone for a calculator,

he has a calculator, very, very important.

He also went to university.

Don't ask which or what, but he went to university.

That one, the university,

it's on the wall.

Something cool about sitcom sets is they're very modular,

you can like erase and start all over very quickly.

So this space is very often used for a classroom.

So they'll take everything out very quickly,

they'll bring in classroom stuff,

they'll put up a couple boards to hide windows or doors

and it turns into a whole nother classroom

in a matter of hours, boom.

I know I said gargoyle, I meant cat.

I sometimes get those words confused.

[audience laughing]

Me too. Really?

No.

[audience laughing]

[bright music]

We're in the hallway going into our kids' bedrooms,

so you go up the stairs in the family room

and you come here into the bedrooms.

We'll start with my son's bedrooms.

So we got Roman and Milo's beds,

we wanted to figure out a way

to make it feel like

both the boys' personalities all at once.

Roman's bed, he has his own,

you know, unique set of patterns here.

Shape language is something that I love,

you know, he's very, he's very circular,

very separate patterns.

And then you have what he would wonder about,

which is like, you know,

the sky and the stars and the human brain.

And then you go up to Max

and Max is a little more adventurous, a little more crazy,

and he's got his monster bed with dragons on it,

and obviously that looks like cowboys and aliens

and they're taking a cow.

So that's what Max thinks about.

So they will put things right up to the edge of the set

so that way the cameras have easy access moving around them

and they have a nice foreground element.

So like even where the camera is right now,

I'm not sure how wide you are,

but this desk probably feels

very much a part of the room, right?

But if you tilt down,

you can see it's like right on the edge of the set,

TV magic.

[vibrant music]

Hi, I'm Janice Leann Brown

and I play the role of Billie and this is her room.

She is very rebellious, mischievous, she's strong

and I think she just really just wants to have fun

all the time, so she's always up for adventure.

In terms of the color palette

with one of the newer sets in Billie's bedroom,

I looked a lot at Selena or Alex Russo's bedroom

from the original Wizards,

I really wanted her room to feel magic, right?

So we did a really bold purple with the decoration,

just giving her lots of like crystals and macrame

and like, you know, cool teenage girl things,

but also very kind of wizardy things

that I think Alex had in her room as well.

And what about Billie? Is she cool?

I promise Billie definitely won't say anything

about being a wizard.

I'm a wizard. [audience laughing]

So, actually, Alex dropped her off at,

you know, this place.

And then, Giada figured, okay, well she's living here,

I don't want her to just sleep on the couch or whatever.

So she, being the lovely person that she is,

she decorated this room for Billie.

Okay, let's go see the room.

[audience laughing]

[audience cheering]

For Billie to have her own room and a home,

it means a lot to her, because she's never felt accepted.

Never had my own room before.

[Both] Yeah, me neither.

Going on to the Wanda Sykes poster.

So funny story, Giada can't know that we're wizards.

One day she asked, you know,

what does Billie like, you know?

'Cause she wanted to decorate her room

in the way that she likes.

Justin had to kind of make up something,

and so, he was like, Oh, she likes her Wanda Sykes.

So that's how this came along.

And I think Billie may have it as motivation

'cause she's always smiling at her when she wakes up.

Okay, where's she from?

Oh, she's from Wisconsin.

[audience laughing]

Wisconsin.

[lively music]

When you're designing for little kids,

you know, if you're dressing the walls

and you've got all this beautiful wall hangings,

you get more bang for your buck if you hang it

right behind their heads instead of way up there.

In multi-camera sitcoms,

all the shots are kind of like middle.

You focus the budget and the money

and everything that you want on camera in that space.

This is Billie's wand.

I don't know why I named it Bobby,

I just felt like it would have a really casual name.

I love this wand 'cause I feel like

it really shows her mischievous

from like the snake and everything,

and then, like, the jewel,

like, it's becoming my best friend.

[upbeat music]

So I'm bringing you to show you

what the actors are looking at

while they're performing on stage.

A very cool part about sitcoms since they were invented

was that they're in front of a live audience,

so the actual laughter that you hear

when you're watching a sitcom

is people sitting in the stands

watching, laughing and reacting in the moment.

That sitcom format is the closest thing

you'll get to a play in television.

We're looking out this way,

so we're performing for the audience,

so you get the immediate reaction of seeing

what a couple hundred people think of your lines.

All right, AD, I am out.

Thank you so much for taking a tour of my set.

It's been a blast,

but I gotta get back to the Wizard World, so.

[David sighs]

[upbeat music continues]