A young Daniel Radcliffe had a few favorite things: Bart Simpson. “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Bouncy castles. French fries with vinegar on the beach. (“English beaches,” he clarifies, “so ‘beaches’ can be in quotes.”)
That was before he became one of the world’s most famous actors, before he embraced New York as his adopted home, before he became a father. But lately he has been thinking about small pleasures as he prepares for his next Broadway role, playing a man who, as a child, starts jotting down reasons to love life in an effort to buoy his suicidal mother.
That Radcliffe, 36, is returning to Broadway at all is a bit of a surprise, at least to him. He won his first Tony Award in 2024 for his last part, in a transformative revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” and, having spent the better part of two years on that project, had decided to take a break from the theater. He has a toddler, a new TV show, and a gestating writing project; that seemed like enough.
But then an enterprising director got the script for “Every Brilliant Thing” into Radcliffe’s hands. He had never seen the show, but was struck by the realization that has guided his twisty career: This seems perilous. I should do that.
“Sometimes I can feel myself getting a little bit too comfortable, like it’s been a little bit too long since I’ve done something that truly is scary,” he told me during one of several conversations.
“I’ve seen this David Lynch quote going ’round,” he added, “that whenever he learned something in life, it came from doing something new, and I think this is what that’ll be for me.”
The challenge is that Radcliffe is the only cast member, but not the only performer: The show is an interactive monologue that involves significant, but voluntary, audience participation. That means an actor who spent a decade playing Harry Potter on film, triggering intense emotions for millions of people he has never met — adulation, for sure, but also familiarity, protectiveness, wonder — will be doing some combination of improv and role-playing with strangers eight times a week.
“It’s complicated, potentially, just because some people go crazy about famous people,” he said. “But I also think that there is a warmth in people’s general feeling about Harry Potter, and by extension, me, which I’m hoping will lend itself toward people actually being willing to take the plunge with me.”
“Every Brilliant Thing” is an 85-minute meditation on gratitude, and grief, and coping, and connection. Also: music. A precursor to the show, a short monologue by Duncan Macmillan, was staged in England 20 years ago; Macmillan then worked with the comedian Jonny Donahoe to expand it into a full-length piece that Donahoe initially performed in 2013.
In the years since, the show has been staged in 66 countries and 44 languages. Phoebe Waller-Bridge performed it in a tent at a music festival. Minnie Driver took a turn in the West End. In Bangladesh, an actress has been doing it in people’s living rooms; in Argentina, 11 actors have cycled through the role. Donahoe, who has performed the show more than 400 times, starred in a 2014 Off Broadway production that can be streamed on HBO Max.
Radcliffe has never seen the play — he wants to find his own interpretation. He has, however, read the script’s 73 footnotes, which are Macmillan’s ever-changing catalog of tips and trivia from previous productions. (Tweaks are made for each performer and place; for Radcliffe, a “Simpsons” die-hard, there is a shout-out to Bart.)
‘An Everyman Quality’
Radcliffe will do the play at the Hudson Theater, which, with about 975 seats, is the biggest space it’s been in; it’s also the same theater where “Merrily” was revived. We met for an interview in a sprawling lounge there, and as we were about to sit, Radcliffe glimpsed himself in a cast photo on the wall. “Oh, no, not under that,” he laughed, and made us move.
In person, Radcliffe is remarkably present. He has clear conversational boundaries, but he is also patient and unpretentious, highly self-aware and deeply thoughtful about his career and his craft.
We talked a lot about fame, which is a subject that interests me because of the way it might affect a solo show with substantial interaction between performer and theatergoers. Everywhere Radcliffe goes, people want to approach, engage, unburden; he is gracious, but it’s a lot to manage — when he ventures out, he often wears a hat and a mask, and he said one of the benefits of this stage in his life is that his friends are more comfortable socializing at home.
It occurred to me, as I watched a rehearsal, that given this show’s subject matter, some people are going to come the stage door determined to share their own sorrows and struggles. “They do anyway — that’s been happening for years,” Radcliffe told me. “I’m used to some very intense interactions, and sometimes really lovely ones, and sometimes ones where I say, you should talk to someone else about this.”
Jeremy Herrin, who is co-directing the Broadway run with Macmillan, said Radcliffe brings to the role something no one else has offered: The audience remembers the actor as a child, which could add a layer of intensity to watching the character talk about his childhood. “He’s got an everyman quality, doesn’t he?” Herrin said. “He’s got a kind of optimism, and a resilience about him.”
Radcliffe described the fit differently. “There’s a lot about this character that I relate to, both in the way that sadness hits them, and in the way that they find joy,” he said. “I’ve experienced sadness, but also I’ve experienced the helplessness of knowing people that are struggling.”
He declined to elaborate, but said, “If you get to the age of 36 and you haven’t known anyone who has struggled, you’d be quite a rare person.”
The show, which begins previews Feb. 21, is one of Radcliffe’s two current projects: He is also starring alongside Tracy Morgan in a new NBC sitcom, “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins,” about a scandal-tarnished football player (Morgan) who hires a fallen filmmaker (Radcliffe) to help him rebound.
Morgan gushed about his newest collaborator, calling him humble, kind and funny. But, also, he said, there’s a fringe benefit. “Working with Daniel Radcliffe,” he said, “I became a cool dad.”
By this point, the unpredictability of Radcliffe’s prolific, post-Potter career has become a defining characteristic. “Not many people have been able to make that transition as smoothly as he did,” said Bryan Cranston, another actor who has veered from screen to stage, “and he’s focused on theater, and it’s a great vehicle for him.”
Even before the final Potter film was released in 2011, Radcliffe made his Broadway debut in “Equus” (2008), which required him to be naked; on film he once played a flatulent corpse (“Swiss Army Man”). “He’s making choices that are not necessarily financial — that are clearly creative,” said Robert Carlock, one of the “Reggie Dinkins” creators. “It looks like he’s having a lot of fun.”
Radcliffe knows he has the rare luxury of picking his projects based on one criterion: taste.
“One of my strengths as an actor is having a good idea of what I’m good for and what I’m not good for,” he said. “Anything that sits in a zone of sweet and kindhearted but also a little bit weird or a little bit dark — that’s a place I really like to be in.”
And why work at all, when you don’t have to? “It’s such a funny question,” he said. “I’ve worked since I was 9. I don’t know what life is without some sense of this. We’ve all got to do something to distract ourselves until we die, and acting is a great, fun thing to do that with.”
New Commitments
Fatherhood, however, has complicated the decision making. “The bar for what will take me away from my family has definitely got higher,” Radcliffe said.
It has also prompted him, finally, to stop smoking. “I’d done it for long enough,” he said. “I started, honestly, just having intrusive thoughts about my own death, and not being around for his growing up.”
He initially turned down an offer to do “Every Brilliant Thing” in London because he lives in New York with his girlfriend, Erin Darke, and their son. But he was open to doing it on Broadway; working mostly at night allows him to spend time with his son during the day.
“He’s just this ball of joy — so happy and funny and sweet — which I find both beautiful and heartbreaking,” he said. “I get really protective, and I suddenly understand every instinct every parent has of home-schooling and moving to the woods.”
His son is still too young to understand that his dad is an actor, or to have any idea who Harry Potter is. Will Radcliffe read the Potter books to him? “If he gets into them, I totally will,” he said, “but I don’t think I’ll nudge him toward them, because I don’t think I’ll need to — he’ll find them eventually.”
He said he has contemplated, not unhappily, the idea that his son would encounter Potter through a forthcoming HBO series, rather than the films. “Hopefully I can just put that on, and he doesn’t have to watch me in it. That’d be, honestly, the ideal.” (And have Radcliffe’s differences with J.K. Rowling about gender identity affected his feelings about the Potter franchise? No comment. “The minute I start talking about that,” he said, “it’s going to obscure anything else.”)
Radcliffe is scheduled to do “Every Brilliant Thing” through May 24. He’s hoping “Reggie Dinkins,” which is shot in the New York area, will turn into a long-running series. He’s committed to a film, the Vietnam War thriller “Trust the Man.” And ultimately, he wants to make his own movies.
“Directing is the thing I would love to do, not on stage, because I do not have an instinctual understanding of how to make things theatrical-wise, but if the Malcolm Gladwell rule is true, I have many thousands of hours on set now, so I should be able to figure out how to run a film set,” he said. He said he’s been writing a script “for ages,” and is now revising it.
“I’ve always wanted the first thing that I’ve directed to be something that I had written,” Radcliffe added, “because that way, if I screw it up, at least I’m screwing my own material up.”
But first, back to Broadway, where the hurdle will be thinking on his feet as he interacts with patrons. Macmillan called managing the audience interaction “a high-wire act, for sure.”
Before each performance, Radcliffe and a few associates will look for audience members willing to read items from his character’s ever-growing list of “brilliant” things, and to portray some key figures in his life.
Radcliffe stresses that it’s all optional. “I know how a lot of people feel about audience participation,” he said. “No one will be forced to do anything.”
He now has a bit of firsthand experience. Late last year, he went to see “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” and was a guest speller in the show. And this month, during “Every Brilliant Thing” rehearsals, stand-in audience members have been enlisted to help Radcliffe explore variations and pitfalls.
“What people are going to bring to this show is going to make it so much fun to do every night,” he said.
And for him? “I’m doing it because it’s fun and interesting and a cool theatrical experience, but also I think there’s something really important in the message of it, and something that might be vital for somebody to hear,” he told me. “I’m not saying this show saves lives, but this show wants people to stay alive.”
Additional cinematography by Gus Aronson.
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
The post Daniel Radcliffe Wanted a Break From Broadway. Then He Read This Play. appeared first on New York Times.
