Daniel Radcliffe doesn’t want to hear if you don’t like Harry Potter
Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, is exasperated by people joking that they thought the Potter movies were bad
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There are a lot of good reasons to not like the Harry Potter movies: you might find the adaptations uneven over a handful of directors; you might think the creator has abhorrent views; or maybe children’s fantasy just isn’t your thing. But if you don’t like it, you don’t have to announce that to the series’ star, because Daniel Radcliffe does not find it funny.
In a new interview with GQ, Radcliffe says that every once in a while someone (“usually young men”) will approach him and joke, “Loved you in Extras, thought Harry Potter was shit.” Pro-tip, the actor finds this type of interaction extremely annoying: “It’s said to me in a way like ‘We’re gonna be closer after I tell you the truth about how I feel.’ You can feel that, but I’m not gonna be like, ‘Yeah, man!’ It was ten years of my life.”
This isn’t to say Radcliffe is rabid about Potter. (“There was something odd” about the Return To Hogwarts anniversary special, “but it was also genuinely much more sweet than I thought it was going to be,” he shares.) However, he comes across remarkably well-adjusted about his time spent on the film series and the accompanying fame. “You just grow up with a sense of like, ‘Okay, people are aware of me, and I need to think about that.’ And eventually it becomes easier to adapt to,” he tells GQ.
“Sometimes if you’re denying the reality of what’s going on, that can actually make your life harder to live,” he adds. “It took a long time, is what I’m saying. But my late teens or early 20s was where I was like, ‘You have to accept life is gonna be different for you.’”
The former child star is coming off of something of a career renaissance, with a few seasons of Miracle Workers, a role in the blockbuster rom-com The Lost City, and a starring turn in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story under his belt. GQ also teases that he’s written his own comedy screenplay and is open to joining another major franchise, should the right part come his way. “I had this awareness that people expected we would do nothing after Potter—that we would fade away,” he says. “I really wanted that not to be the case, because I knew that I loved it, and I wanted to do whatever I have to do to have a career with longevity.”
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Do people who’ve seen Equus come up to him and say “Nice cock”?
He was in Equus? So that’s why he acted weird when I said that to him.
He was. My wife saw it.
What did she think?
About the performance of the dick?EDIT: I meant “or” the dick but I’m not going to change it because “the performance of the dick” is a happy little accident and I’m just chuffed with it.
You’re like the Bob Ross of penis!
All good!
The play, or just his cock?
His cock, obviously.
She’s oddly evasive when I ask her that.
Were you already out to her before asking for the deets about another man’s penis?
What does that have to do with it?
“Liked Equus. Sorry about the penis.”
Never apologize for the penis!
“The former child star is coming off of something of a career renaissance”Wouldn’t a renaissance involve having had a downturn in his career? The last Harry Potter film only came out 11 years ago and in the meantime he’s been working pretty steadily.
Plus, he got to play a farting corpse, so any career after that is just gravy.
Yeah, and his indie/weirder movies were fully his choice; I’m sure he could have gotten work in more mainstream stuff, but that’s just not what he wanted to do at the time. He’s never not been relevant and working.
SPOILER ALERT:
Daniel Radcliffe is the new James Bond.
Makes sense. Spies have to be able to sneak into places, and who better than someone who can walk through a keyhole.
Did Q make the Marauders’ Map?Nuclear Defense Alert: “Detonation in 5… 4… 3…”007: “EXPECTO PATRONUM!!”Nuclear Defense Alert: “2… 1… Avada Kedavra!”
“Polyjuice potion. Shaken, not stirred!”
It says a lot about his headspace that he hasn’t felt the need to only pursue more and bigger blockbusters (a practical impossibility given where he started). Likewise, I realize Robert Pattinson was the latest Batman but he also seemed to ride his early financial success into doing whatever he felt like professionally. I doubt Good Time paid quite so well.
Yeah, with Pattinson it felt like he was doing those movies like The Rover and Good Time and The Lighthouse at least in part to be like, “Guys, I swear, I actually am a good actor despite what Twilight might suggest.” And he was right; he’s terrific and has rebuilt his reputation from heartthrob to well-respected actor. It’s honestly been impressive to watch.
Radcliffe and he both seem like they’d be fun and interesting people to have a few drinks with.
Now I’m wondering what film/TV project they belong together in.
Probably Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Exactly. And he’s made some delightfully weird and interesting choices since before the last Potter movie even finished. Daniel, I may not like Potter, but I think you’re killing it.
He just said not to say that!
Aw, crap. I was hoping my honesty would endear him to me!
A Young Doctor’s Notebook was an under the radar gem.
Plus, he got to play a farting corpse, so any career after that is just gravy.Ewww XD
He was just great in The Lost City. Talk about chewing the scenery!
“career renaissance”
RADCLIFFE HAS NEVER BEEN ANYTHING BUT INTERESTING, NO MATTER HOW ODD THE MATERIAL HE IS IN WAS. AND HE IS QUITE CLEARLY CHOOSING TO DO THINGS THAT INTEREST HIM, NOT THINGS THAT ARE INTENDED OR EXPECTED TO DO LARGE BOX OFFICE NUMBERS.THIS IS, THEREFORE, A VERY BIZARRE OPINION THAT CAN ONLY BE ABOUT THE DEGREE TO WHICH HE APPEARS IN A CROWD-PLEASER. AND FOR SOME ACTORS THAT MIGHT BE IMPORTANT, BUT RADCLIFFE CLEARLY DOESN’T CARE, OR NEED TO.
I SUSPECT HE COULD BE QUITE HAPPY SPENDING YEARS PLAYING THE DENTIST IN A SMALL PRODUCTION OF LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. HE WOULD KILL IT, OF COURSE.
“HE WOULD KILL IT, OF COURSE.”Well, you would know.
I wonder how he’d feel if I told him I only liked one of those movies.
I mean, only Cuarón tried to do anything other than “make a blockbuster.” It’s no secret than that’s the only one that’s “good” in a filmmaking sense. The rest are enjoyable enough though. No need to pretend that they’re terrible.
I feel like it shouldn’t be necessary to say this, but don’t walk up to celebrities on the street and start telling them how much you dislike their work. That’s just lame as hell.
Unless it’s Les Claypool.
“I understood this reference.”
HASo, oddball barely-related anecdote: I got him to sign my bass years ago (dream of a lifetime), and totally on-brand, he wrote “bass sucks!” The man certainly sticks to a bit.
I think it’s fine but if we’re harassing people about bad movies it should probably be writers and directors who get yelled at. Even if an actor gives a terrible performance they cast them in the role.
good reasons to not like the Harry Potter
movies… you might think the creator has abhorrent views
Nope, still not a “good” reason. Believe it or not you can appreciate and enjoy the art and not necessarily the artist.
Yeah, it’s how I still enjoy reading Ender’s Game despite Orson Scott Card being a homophobic piece of shit. (Which is odd, because the first gay sex scene I ever read in a book was from Card’s novel Songmaster.)
Wait, he has a gay sex scene in a book?!? I have to read that, because he can’t be good (or considering he has obvious homosexual feelings considering his anti-gay stance, maybe it’s really good fantasy).Ender’s Game is one of my all time favorite series, but man, those shitty Memory of Earth Mormon books really fucking lost him to me way before the shitty George W. Bush jerking off did.
Well here’s the thing about the scene in Songmaster: when the main character was growing up, he was loaded up with various drugs to help him sing better. These drugs have an adverse effect in the sex scene: when the character finally climaxes, it’s extremely painful and renders him impotent. His lover is then arrested and commits suicide in his cell. Perhaps Card was going for “gay sex is wrong and you will die”, but all I got out of it was “why does society have to be so shitty to two people who love each other?”, so joke’s on him.
to some it’s a good reason, to some it’s not.
Well, actually – it is. It’s as valid a reason as any other.
Are the movies considered her art?I mean she wrote the books, but screenplays are an adaptation of the source material are written by others.Having never read the books and only seen two of the movies, i am coming from a largely ignorant position, but i am also proposing my question more generally.For Music/Musician, the art/artist is closely linked, as with Author/Book, but a movie is a degree of separation from the author.For example, the last season of Game of Thrones. D&D got hammered, but there wasn’t a lot of criticism pointing at GRRM, even though they were working largely off his outline of how things would end up.
while i agree that you absolutely can enjoy the series while hating it’s creator (that’s where i landed on all this),you need to understand that this is a very personal subject that rattled the entire fandom (keep in mind that most the the fandom were about the same age as harry when the books/movies first came out so this series is something a lot of people grew up with) so it’s up to each fan to decide for themselves if they can still enjoy the series or if it’s been forever tainted.so long as you don’t go calling people transphobic simply for liking it (even if they hate rowling) then it’s perfectly valid to never touch a wand or robe ever again if that is what you feel is best for you.
What if I told him I really liked Swiss Army Man?
He’d probably be pretty happy, because he appears to be (rightfully) proud of it.
Daniel Radcliffe has seemingly gotten through the utter bizarreness of being a child star in a massive franchise and come out the other end a genuinely good dude.(Please don’t let this comment be a trigger for some horrible news story to come out about him.)