In London for a press event in support of the Deathly Hallows, Radcliffe talked about filming the final movies and his time spent on the Harry Potter sets. He also provided a little insight into what life has in store for the actor who'll forever be known to millions and millions of fans worldwide as The Chosen One.
On the Challenges of Deathly Hallows' Emotional Scenes:
Daniel Radcliffe: "I think, because we're growing up the whole time as well though, it didn't seem like too much of a challenge. I mean it was a challenge. There were challenging moments, but it felt like this was a natural progression to where we got to. It didn't feel like we were being asked to make a massive leap. It felt like we were certainly being allowed to do what we'd kind of been ready to do for the last two or three years, in terms of where we'd been at in our performances."
On Splitting Deathly Hallows in Two and Allowing the Characters to Develop:
Daniel Radcliffe: "On this film we were very lucky because had we tried to condense the book into one movie, which I think would've been disastrous, a lot of the stuff that would've been cut would've been a lot of the stuff in this film, probably. All that on the road section would've suffered dramatically. So, yeah, for us to have all that time to explore the characters... What's great about it is is it's character exploration, but it's actually really interesting as well. It never crosses that line into being indulgent because there's always something going on. You're never more than five scenes away from a massive fight or something."
On Filming Scenes Featuring Just Harry, Hermione and Ron Instead of the Hogwarts Gang:
Daniel Radcliffe: "[...]It’s interesting because we didn't film it in sequence. We never really felt that at the time, I suppose, because we'd film a scene with just the two of us for maybe two days and then we'd be doing a wedding scene with loads of people or something. So it was broken up in such a way that I don't think we ever really felt as isolated as the characters did. But yeah, I think it gives it a much more interesting feel to the first film because we've never seen these characters without Hogwarts and without all these sort of familiar, standard characters that you always see around them. So it gave it, I think, a much fresher feel and made it a bit more interesting."
On Googling Himself and Fan Support:
Daniel Radcliffe: "When I was 14 or 15 I did and there's a line in The Thick of It, which is one of my favorite programs - and you'll all have to excuse me because I'm about to use a mild swear word now - but they said, 'Googling yourself is like opening a door to a room full of people telling you how s**t you are.' So it comes from a place of sort of sadomasochistic egomania, that kind of thing where you think, 'Okay, I'll write my name in and see what comes up.' All you're going on for is to hear nice things about yourself and all you find are terrible things, generally speaking. It doesn't matter if there's a list of 20 comments. 19 of them could be fantastic and the one that's bad just eats you up. So since then I sort of stopped Googling myself. Since that day."
"But in terms of the actual scale of Potter, I think it is amazing. I mean, and in a way it's one of the things that keeps me grounded and sane is the fact that you have to remember that it's not because of me that people are screaming at the premieres. Anybody who got this part would've had that level of mania surrounding them a few weeks a year. I think that's very important to remember. I just got very, very lucky with the part that I fell into. But in a way it's a case of because it becomes such a part of your life, and a job in the most positive sense - I love my job, but it is a job - you get up and you do your job and you go to work and you see the crew and you see everyone you know. And you don't really have a sense of how big it is when you're right in the center of it. It's sort of a case of not being to see the wood for the trees. But it is an amazing, amazing sort of phenomenon."
"The other thing I think I can say about fans and about the sort of the scale is the fact that when you compare... It's interesting. Harry Potter is essentially, even though there are films now, is still at the heart of it, is a literary phenomenon. When you compare the fans of this to something like, say, Star Trek or Star Wars, all of which have that same incredibly devoted fan base, because it starts off as a literary thing, it’s kind of inspired a generation of really, really literate, interesting fans, not just sort of geeks who just watch episodes over and over and over. But actually people who've, having been so inspired by the Harry Potter books have then gone off and expanded their reading into other areas. I think that's what's the most remarkable thing about it. I don't think there are any other kind of fans like Harry Potter who are so interested in everything and not just the thing that is the focus of their fandom."
Looking Back on His Introduction to the Harry Potter Books:
Daniel Radcliffe: "It was my parents. They read it to me. I think they read the first two to me when I was eight or nine I think because I just didn't read at all then. It's something that I like to think that I've made up for in the years since. I didn't read at all at that time. I found it boring. I enjoyed having the book read to me. It was great. My dad did a fantastic Basilisk voice. When I tried to get Chris Columbus... I said to Chris, 'You you should really hear my dad's Basilisk voice. That would be great.' I think Chris, 'Yeah, that's great, Dan. I think we'll get an actor to do it.' But then after they read the second to me I think I sort of then drifted away from Harry Potter and didn't really read them so much - or at all. And then when I got the part I thought, 'Oh, I should probably read these.'"
Did He Want to Play Harry After Reading the Books?:
Daniel Radcliffe: "No, not particularly. His life sounded like a nightmare! I thought, 'God, this poor kid.' But I think after I got the part I then went back and read all four. I think only the first four had come out at that point. I read them all back to back and just became obsessed and would charge around my room, despite having been filming as him during the day, I would charge around my hotel room in Newcastle where we were filming the scenes with a broom, the shot where it leaps up into my hand. We would be doing all that stuff and I would be going back to my hotel room at night and having wand fights with nobody. It's a pity I didn't have a brother, yeah."
On the Impact Playing Harry's Had on His Life and How He's Stayed the Same Throughout the Experience:
Daniel Radcliffe: "I'm still very hyperactive. I've still got quite a lot of energy. I think the one thing that's different is that I have worked out a way in which I can sort of pace that energy more sensibly throughout the day so I don't just go nuts for four hours and then crash and burn. What else has stayed the same? I'm probably still as curious now as I was then. I think curiosity is probably the greatest thing anybody can have."
"I think I'm still quite respectful of a film set, as I was then. But when I was 11 it was out of a sort of awe that I had respect for film sets. Now it's because I'm so involved in them and I realize how wonderful they are to work on and what a wonderful experience it can be. It's a very communal experience when you're working with a group of people for three or four months on a normal film and anything from 11 to 18 months on a Harry Potter film. You're all striving towards the same thing. There might be times when you feel that you're pulling in different directions, but ultimately you are all going the same way and trying to make a good film together. That's something that I think is very special. I have a healthy respect for the workings of a film set I think is something that's not changed."
On His Dance Scene with Emma Watson:
Daniel Radcliffe: "It was good! It was a very sweet scene. It was funny though because when I watched the film for the first time, I watched it with a friend of mine and when the Nick Cave song came on I went, 'That is the coolest Harry Potter has ever been.' Then she said, 'Yeah, but that's not,' when I started doing disco dancing."
"It's a sweet scene, I think. It was one that David [Yates] sort of made up on the spot, pretty much, and then Emma is actually quite a good dancer. So it was for me to sort of muddle through, but Harry shouldn't be a good dancer. He should be kind of crap, which I was. But next year on Broadway I hope to see a large improvement in that - don't worry."
On Heading to the Stage for How to Succeed in Business:
Daniel Radcliffe: "I'm very excited. Hopefully I should be able to honor it. In terms of the singing, I'm not particularly too worried. I love singing and I've been doing it for a long time, but dancing is something that I've never done before, before taking lessons for this. But, generally speaking, I've been doing about nine hours a week of training and so if I screw up it's not through lack of trying. We start rehearsals in January, I think we open in March. I think we start previewing in February but then open in March."
On How He Got Hooked Up with Singing and Dancing on Broadway:
Daniel Radcliffe: "You know, it's bizarre. It came about when I did Equus Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, the producers of How To Succeed, came backstage after Equus and they said, 'You can sing?' I went, 'Well, I can sing the Milky Bar theme to you.' That's what I had to sing in Equus. And they went, 'Oh, great. Well, we've got to find a musical.’ Those guys - it's a testament to persistence because they played us the show and we're like, 'Okay... No, I like it. It's good, but I'm not sure the next thing to do.' And then they sent us a script and then gradually, just through their persistence, we started falling in love with it . And now I can't imagine myself doing any other thing as my first musical."
"Also, it's never really been played by somebody my age before. I think that makes it quite exciting because, as I said, it's never really been played at this age and I think that makes a big difference to the character. Because whereas if you have a guy in his late 20s, early 30s playing it, you go, 'Okay, he's kind of a manipulative douche, really.' But when you've got somebody at my age playing it it means that you kind of attribute it to sort of youthful hutzpah and you don't really question it so much."
On Shooting the Final Harry Potter Scene:
Daniel Radcliffe: "There was lots of crying from Emma, Rupert and I and the crew as well because a lot of them have been there for 10 years as well. So there were lots of tears from everybody, really. It was very sad and at the time I remember sort of being quite inconsolable for like two hours. And then four hours later I was on a plane and I was reading a script for The Woman in Black which I'm now filming. So we move on!"
What is The Woman in Black?:
Daniel Radcliffe: "It's an adaptation of the Susan Hill novel and it's a gothic horror movie. I play a 24 year old father of one whose wife has died. I’m a lawyer who gets sent to the house of a woman who has recently died to go through all her documents and sort of collate them all. The house that he goes to is haunted - not to give too much away."
"We did take a leap out of their book in terms of that sort of sexed up Victoriana kind of look in terms of the costumes. I have an amazing costume in the film. I love it. It's a very simple grey suit but it's really well fitted and it's a nice waistcoat and I've got a fob watch and I've got little sideburns as well. I'm really enjoying this look. It's how I would dress all the time if that wouldn't get me beaten up in London."
Daniel Radcliffe Won't Be Heading Off to College:
Daniel Radcliffe: "I don't think so. I'm going to try to make a career for myself. Emma is the most academic out of all three of us by quite a long way, so I don't think university would've been in the cards for myself and Rupert. To be honest, I found school very, very hard. I got good results most of the time, but then I dropped out a year early because I was going through rehearsals for Equus. And to be honest, I think when you find something that...I found something that I have some aptitude with - I hesitate to say that I'm good at it because I'm so far away from being finished at school and I've still got a lot to learn but I certainly think that I'm better at this than I would be at anything else. So I'm going to try to just focus on that and try to make as long a career for myself as possible."
On Getting Mobbed in the Streets:
Daniel Radcliffe: "Around my area, they're quite used to me. It's like, 'Oh, there he is again.' But also I think the advantage of being 5'5" is that sort of no one really looks twice. If you're just a skinny guy in a crowd, that doesn't really attract too much attention."
Is It Ever Out of Control?:
Daniel Radcliffe: "Not really. Only in Japan. In Japan it went wild when I was in Japan. It's amazing because it manages to be both aggressive and incredibly restrained at the same time. They would charge towards you, but it's like there is an invisible barricade two foot from you and they will not go past that. It's really incredible. It’s like having some sort of force field protecting you. When I arrived in Japan when I was 13 there were 5,000 people waiting in the airport arrivals screaming. It was pretty intense. I am a Beatle in Japan."
"There's a program in Japan called Let’s Go To School. It's this thing where these two girls have written off to the program makers and said, 'We would like Daniel Radcliffe to come to our school.' And normally it's kind of like big Japanese celebrities so they're not used to other famous people coming around. Anyway, these two girls wrote and said, 'We would like Daniel Radcliffe to come to our school.' And these two young Japanese guys in tuxes who presented the show, very nice guys, they sort of said to me, 'These people don't you're coming, so it's going to be a really big surprise.' Anyway, we got around the corner and there were hundreds of girls leaning out of the windows to a dangerous degree, you know? I was walking inside and there was actually a moment where I sort of bumped into a girl and I said, 'Oh, sorry,' and she just fainted. It's bizarre."
