Daniel Radcliffe, Man Of The People
The former wizard now finds power in range — from an aching stage drama to a silly sitcom to Winnie the Pooh.
Early on in Every Brilliant Thing, Daniel Radcliffe asks the audience to do something together: “Let’s all take a breath, all right?”
Right on cue, a theater filled with thousands of strangers and one very famous actor inhale and exhale in unison. It’s a moment that could feel contrived, but steered by Radcliffe’s unassuming yet magnetic stage presence, it’s powerful — and sets the stage for what’s to come.
“It’s funny, I really resisted that moment,” Radcliffe, 36, tells me over Zoom on a Thursday afternoon, sounding more energized than fatigued after yesterday’s two-show day — he’s just returned from the gym and will head back to the Hudson Theatre in a few hours for tonight’s 7 p.m. curtain. “I felt like it’s a bit woo-woo for me. And then I heard the noise of a thousand people breathing in and out together, and I was like, ‘Oh, I am completely sold. That was awesome.’ It actually does feel like it’s a moment for everybody to sync up with each other.”
The role of the audience is essential to Every Brilliant Thing, so being in tune with them isn’t just a capital-A Actor thing. The intimate and heartfelt play centers on a nameless narrator who begins a list of the so-called “brilliant” things that make life worth living in the aftermath of his mother’s suicide attempt. While ostensibly a one-man show, it very much hinges on crowd participation: For the half hour before the performance officially begins, Radcliffe zips and zags around the theater, recruiting people for parts both small (calling out a brilliant thing on cue, like "spaghetti bolognese” or “the smell of old books”) and substantial (playing a teacher, his father, or his love interest).
The show wasn’t written for Radcliffe specifically; it’s been performed around the world, including a recent run in London where actors like Minnie Driver played the narrator. But something about seeing the former Harry Potter star — someone we’ve seen grow up alongside us as he faced down the forces of evil on screen — portray a character navigating love, grief, and depression makes the experience that much more poignant. It also gives Radcliffe a way to interact with the public in a way an actor with his level of fame can’t do in his everyday life. “When I’m out and about and when I’m in a crowded place, my usual MO is to be as inconspicuous and as hidden as possible, and it is incredibly liberating and nice to just walk into a room and not have to do that for a change,” he says. That’s become one of his favorite aspects of the show — and though he didn’t use the word per se, it could certainly qualify as a “brilliant” thing.
Since wrapping up the Potter franchise in 2011, Radcliffe has become a regular Broadway player, winning a Tony Award in 2024 for Merrily We Roll Along, while also taking big swings in film and TV (as “Weird Al” Yankovic in 2022’s parody biopic Weird, as a farting corpse in 2016’s Swiss Army Man). If Every Brilliant Thing demonstrates one side of Radcliffe’s range, his other current project sits firmly at the other end of the gamut. In NBC’s The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, a sports-mockumentary sitcom from the team behind 30 Rock, Radcliffe is the straight-man filmmaker opposite Tracy Morgan’s disgraced ex-football star. “Everything I do,” he says, “I either want to be very, very meaningful… or just really silly and fun.” Right now, he’s doing both.
We spoke about casting his audience participants, winding down with Jeopardy!, and trying not to break when Tracy Morgan is being Tracy Morgan.
My friend and I saw Every Brilliant Thing the other week, and we both left very heartened. Are you hearing versions of that from a lot of people?
I’m hearing from a lot of people about the ways in which they specifically relate to it. It’s obviously a show that hits very differently depending on the specific circumstances of your life. I think a lot of people will find it very life-affirming and uplifting. Hopefully, there is catharsis in it for people. The show’s message is so inarguably good and well-intentioned that there will be somebody out there in the audience who needs to hear it every night. So even on the nights when you are tired or feeling stressed or whatever, there’s something very energizing about the thought that there will be somebody out there who needs to hear this particular show on this particular day.
How do you choose participants when you’re making your way around the audience?
I love when people connect with a card [where they call out one of the brilliant things]. I try to find people who like music for the music-related ones, and I always slightly profile the audience and give the “even-numbered Star Trek films” to a man about my age, because even if they’re not actually a Star Trek fan, everyone in the audience can project a certain kind of nerdiness onto them. With the larger parts, it really is just a question of going around and checking vibes. You want people who aren’t averse to doing it, but also aren’t the first people to stick their hand up for something.
I’ve also learned that I’m terrible at guessing what the relationship between two people is. The amount of people I’ve gone up to and asked, "Are you a couple?" that have been family, it's mortifying, but it’s fine. It’s happening so many times a night now that I can’t really be embarrassed about it anymore.
I imagine that this lets you engage with people in a way you might not normally get to, even in a place like New York where I feel like folks pride themselves on not bothering people.
New York is the best city in the world for that, for sure. That half hour before the show of just being like, yeah, it’s me, and it’s not a big deal, is very unlike how I normally get to interact with people. There’s a line in the show where the character’s talking about not actually being shy, but people thinking he’s shy because the circumstances of his life have meant that he feels like he needs to be. That’s something I really relate to. I’m not an extroverted person, but I’m not necessarily as introverted as I come across because I’m trying to remain below the radar at all times. There’s something nice about just being able to go up to people and have a very relaxed interaction.
You just get to be like, “Hi, I’m Dan.”
“Hi, I’m Dan. I love what you’re wearing.”
It must take a degree of effort to do the opposite in other aspects of your life.
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s not something I particularly even think about anymore. It has been such an aspect of my life for so long that it's how I move through the world.
Can I ask you about the books you pull from the audience during the show? I don’t think people necessarily realize they aren’t planted — even if they feel perfectly coincidental. The night I went, you grabbed How Sondheim Can Change Your Life.
That’s a good one. I’ve been getting a lot of Sarah J. Maas books, which is fun. We got Heated Rivalry the other day. Last night was the first night that I got a book that I knew and loved and could talk about, which was Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It was nice, for once, to actually be able to sound like I had read the book and knew what it was about, rather than just trying to say something funny about it.
I am both petrified of and love that section every night. When I read the script, one of my first questions was, “Who’s bringing books to the theater? Does that happen?” On opening night, actually, was the fewest books that have ever been presented. One of the only books on offer that night was a Harry Potter book. I was like, “F*ck it, if we’re going to do it, we’ll do it one time. We’ll do it on opening, I’ll give it to my date, and I’ll pretend to not have heard of this book.”
Is it hard to wind down after a performance?
I can’t remember who coined this phrase, but I’ve heard talk about the idea of having a social hangover where you’ve been to a party and then you come home and you go, “Oh my God, that thing I said to that person, was that OK?” I feel I get that way with the show. There is something about it that feels like hosting a party for 900 people every night. I said to my partner, Erin [Darke], the other day, “I promise, I think after we open, I’ll get more relaxed about this stuff.” And she was like, “Dan, I’ve been going to parties with you for 14 years, and you’ve never got more relaxed about any of it. So I doubt very much that you will be.” I’m trying to talk about it with people at the theater so I don’t bring it home too much, but there’s a wind-down period for sure. And then normally it’s just a couple of episodes of Jeopardy! and I’m good to go to bed.
You’ve done all of this really interesting and varied work over the course of your career — blockbusters and Broadway musicals. How do you choose what speaks to you?
I did Equus while I was still doing Harry Potter, and I was doing things like Horns pretty quickly afterwards. Honestly, I’m just in a position that very few people ever find themselves in where I can just do what speaks to me. I feel like this play and Reggie Dinkins show you the two ends of that spectrum right now. I love Every Brilliant Thing because it’s a really fun show to do, but it's also got an incredible heart at its core. And then there’s Reggie, which also has a sweetness to it, but it’s crazy and fun and silly and great.
What's it like playing the straight man on a show like Reggie, especially against somebody like Tracy Morgan?
The straight guy in comedy is really where I’m kind of best in comedy. They take me to some more unhinged places as the season goes on, but I always feel like I am generally at my funniest when the character I’m playing has no idea that something funny is happening and is just playing the reality of a situation. And playing the straight man opposite Tracy Morgan? Most of the job is just trying not to laugh and ruin takes — because when he gets going, he is one of the funniest people on the planet.
I feel like the line between Tracy Morgan and Tracy Jordan, his 30 Rock character, is nonexistent at this point.
Very thin. There’s definitely things that Tracy says where you’re like, “I don't know if you said that first or if that was on 30 Rock first.” Even in Reggie, there’s a lot of stuff that he says that we end up working into the character ‘cause it’s so funny.
What’s something else that you’re enjoying right now in your own time? Do you have your own personal brilliant thing?
My son, who will be 3 soon, has just gotten really into Winnie the Pooh, and he just loves me reading the books to him. And I have to say, there’s a lot of the older books for kids that I find like, “Oh, this isn’t actually as charming as I remembered it,” but I have to say, A.A. Milne really holds up.
Photographer: Caroline Tompkins
Stylist: Sam Spector
Writer: Jessica Derschowitz
Editor-in-Chief: Charlotte Owen
Editorial Director: Christina Amoroso
Creative Director: Karen Hibbert
Groomer: Tanya Pacht
Video: Mila Grgas
Photo Director: Jackie Ladner
Production: Danielle Smit & Cassidy Gill
Features Director: Nolan Feeney
Social Director: Charlie Mock
Talent Bookings: Special Projects
