Daniel Radcliffe Loves Playing a Neurotic Creative—and Wants You to Join Him
When I ask Radcliffe about the public response to his previous statements about Rowling, things get a bit tense. He demurs, politely explaining why he’d prefer not to speak about her. “The reason I don’t talk about it anymore is because I’ve said what I want to say on it,” he says. When I point out that I can understand that it might be a thorny subject for him—Rowling’s pivot to avowed anti-trans rhetoric—he corrects me. “To me, it’s not been thorny,” he says. “It’s been a simple thing to talk about. It’s been very easy for me to talk about.”The problem, to him, isn’t his position. It’s this: “You will write a really nice article about this interview and then nobody will talk about anything from it because it’s just giving the Daily Mail pull quotes. And I really hate giving the Daily Mail pull quotes.”The world Rowling created is inescapable. A few blocks from where we’re sitting, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child just celebrated its seventh year on Broadway, and recently welcomed a new cast member in Tom Felton—who played Draco Malfoy to Radcliffe’s Harry in the film series. Although his old costar is just around the corner, Radcliffe has yet to see the production, and doesn’t foresee taking a day off from Every Brilliant Thing to catch a matinee of Cursed Child. “I have told Tom I’m unlikely to, purely because watching that show in a sea of Harry Potter fans seems like the most stressful couple of hours that I could possibly have,” Radcliffe says. “Nothing sucks more than people watching you watch something. And I feel like there would be a bit of that.”Still, Radcliffe is thinking of ways he can catch Felton’s Broadway debut. “We do have some stagehands in common who have been helping us load in. Maybe I’ll try and sneak in and see through some weird vestibule at the background, sneak into the spotlight booth,” he says. Note to Times Square pedestrians: If you see a big, human-size box rolling into the Lyric Theatre, leave it be.In any case, he’s chuffed that he and his old friend are experiencing the same thing at the same time. “Me and Tom have been talking about how crazy it is that we met 26 years ago and are now both a stone’s throw from each other on Broadway,” says Radcliffe. On that note, Radcliffe also has a bone to pick with some media outlets about how they’ve reported on his relationships with his Harry Potter costars in the past.“I was really annoyed. [Tom Felton’s] lovely enough to come to the premiere of Merrily, and the way the world reacted was like, ‘It’s the first time they’ve seen each other in 14 years,’” says Radcliffe. “Like, no, it fucking isn’t.” He’s getting a bit heated. “You don’t know our lives. We’ve met tons of times in between. I have probably seen Tom more than I’ve seen any other individual cast member. There’s some crew members that I’m very, very close to, but I’ve seen Tom a huge amount in between.”
