Daniel Radcliffe’s NME Cover Interview

NME recently released their cover interview with Daniel Radcliffe – which is hilarious as usual – and definitely worth a read.

Here are a few extracts:

‘Bouncing into a huge wood-panelled conference room above the photography studio where he’s just been shot for NME’s cover, Daniel Radcliffe is presented with a cup and reaches for the sweeteners. “How many of these are you supposed to use?” he asks, merrily clicking little white pellets into his drink. Each of those is one sugar, we tell him. You’ve just given yourself seven sugars. “Oh, right,” he laughs. “Well, we’ll leave that then.”’

Radcliffe was asked about his choices in on-screen and stage appearances since Harry Potter. From The Woman In Black, Horns, Kill Your Darlings and The Young Doctor’s Notebook, to Equus, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying and – most recently – ‘Igor’ in Victor Frankenstein (released December 3rd):

‘“No, I don’t really have mainstream tastes,” he says. “People do ask me, ‘Why do you choose such weird movies?’ but I don’t think they’re weird, they’re just stories I’m interested in. Isn’t having weird tastes good, though? I think so. I think that’s better than always wanting to play the handsome hero. You think I’m weird? I’ll take that.”’

Answering on expectations of his acting abilities after Potter, and on his appearance in studio films:

‘“I had a huge amount to prove [after Potter],” continues Radcliffe. “Proving that you can be a young actor and not be a complete f*****g disaster when you grow up. That is the – quite unfair I think – image that people have of young actors. There are a huge number of child actors who grow up fine. Always with my career in film, I saw Potter as an amazing beginning to it. I’m sure I’ll never hit that kind of commercial peak again but very, very few people will.” ‘

…

”Doing studio movies is fun because you get to do stuff that you mostly wouldn’t get to do on an indie movie, in terms of action. There is a part of me that, because I grew up doing it, loves that stuff and really misses it. Frankenstein was just the most interesting and original script I’d seen from a studio. It looked like fun to make, and it was.”’

Dan even commented on the first images of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them:

‘We meet on the day that the first images were revealed of Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, the 1920s-set Potter spin-off that stars Eddie Redmayne as a magical explorer who collects bizarre creatures. Radcliffe hasn’t seen the pictures and jumps up to look at them on my phone, clocking Redmayne’s swishy cerulean coat and barking, “Oh f*** you, Eddie, in your brilliant costume… I got jeans and a zip top for 10 years and you’ve got a greatcoat already?”’

The prospect of anybody else playing Harry is strange to all of us (including Dan), but exciting at the same time – so exciting that Dan says he wants to wants to see Cursed Child:

‘What’s it like knowing someone else is going to play Harry? “It’s weird,” he says. “But I’m happy for it to go on without me. I’ve no ownership of it.” Would he go and see it? “Now that I know [Harry’s in it] I actually really want to see it. It would be a mental thing to try and see it with lots of very excited Harry Potter fans. But I kind of would like to know what happens now.”’

And – finally – touching words regarding the success of Harry Potter in continuing to inspire the world, and the part he plays in its influence:

‘He goes all wistful for a minute. “I’d always thought in the years after Potter finished that it would die down, but it’s just grown more because the people who were massive Harry Potter fans in their teens are now adults. So you meet them more. They’re not at home with their parents, they’re out in the world. It always amazes me when someone says what a huge part of their childhood it was. I still have a natural reserve that makes me go, ‘Oh don’t be so silly, I wasn’t responsible for your childhood.’ But I think about the stuff that means a lot for me from my childhood, like The Simpsons, and how, when I did a voice on The Simpsons I got a signed thing from Matt Groening and that was so f*****g exciting. The thought that I might occupy that space in somebody else’s childhood…”’

We’d definitely recommend reading the rest of the interview here!