The stage actor was first hired to be an understudy of the grown-up wizard in Broadway’s “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” Then he led the cast in San Francisco before the pandemic hit. He returned to Potter on a yearlong national tour and now finds himself back on Broadway, with the role officially his.

“It’s like something that just kind of keeps coming back into my life,” says Skelley. “There have been multiple times where I thought, ‘Well, that might be the last time I do it.’ And then the opportunity kind of keeps coming back.”

All this from a guy who wasn’t initially a huge fan of Potter and the gang from Hogwarts. He hadn’t read the books before he auditioned, nor seen the stage show, although he had seen the movies when visiting his now-wife in grad school while she was at class.

Once he landed the gig, Skelley inhaled the “Harry Potter” books — one a week for seven weeks — and has listened to two different audiobooks. Harry Potter is now front and center.

This photo provided by Matthew Murphy shows John Skelley as Harry Potter in "Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. (Matthew Murphy via AP)

“It’s definitely become a huge part of my professional and personal life,” he says. “I mean, the amount of Harry Potter memorabilia sitting in front of me right now is crazy.”

‘Do you want to go to Hogwarts?’

The Minneapolis-born Skelley has been acting since age 8 when he starred in “It’s a Jungle Out There,” his second grade class musical. He graduated from the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program and has been a professional actor since 2007.

He and his wife, the actor Maren Searle, moved to New York in 2014 and for four years landed commercial voice work, off-Broadway gigs and narrated audiobooks.

He earned a New York actor’s rite of passage when he was cast in an episode of “Law & Order: SVU,” playing a Legal Aid lawyer. “I had like two lines, but I felt like I’d made it: ‘I’m a New York actor now. ‘Law & Order,’ baby!'”

Then he got a call from his agent asking if he was willing to audition as an understudy for Potter, going on if the main actor was ill or unavailable. He naturally said yes.

The play picks up 19 years after the end of the final novel, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” An adult Potter is married to Ginny Weasley, sister of his best friend, Ron, who married brainy Hermione. Both couples have children and all are in danger again.

Skelley attended an hourlong movement call — at one point dancing with a wand — and then was asked to perform two scenes from the play. He tried to keep smiling.

“When I was a kid, I was trying out for the freshman football team, and I was not the greatest athlete by far. But my philosophy was like, ‘Run to the end of the drill, run to the end of the line, make sure you’re the kid who doesn’t give up early.’ And that won me my spot on the football team. So, I tried to have that same attitude.”