\u201cYou can’t compare Tracy [Morgan] to any other actor you’ve ever worked with.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Daniel Radcliffe<\/a> on\u00a0starring with\u00a0Tracy Morgan<\/a> in\u00a0The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins<\/em>, his Broadway<\/a> journey and\u00a0Harry Potter<\/a><\/em>: \u201cI love that people love those movies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n PARTING SHOT\u00a0PODCAST WITH H. ALAN SCOTT<\/a><\/em>:<\/strong> Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.<\/em><\/p>\n I’ve\u00a0seen you in\u00a0Merrily We Roll\u00a0Along<\/em>,\u00a0I’ve\u00a0seen you on Broadway a few times now.\u00a0And you’re back now with Every Little Thing. <\/em>You’ve\u00a0become\u00a0kind of a\u00a0Broadway staple. How does that feel?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Lovely.\u00a0I mean, it’s really, really nice.\u00a0And whenever somebody talks about stunt casting or celebrities, they\u00a0kind of go, “Oh, he doesn’t count.\u00a0He’s\u00a0here all the time,” which\u00a0I’m\u00a0really like,\u00a0“that’s\u00a0great. I could not wish that to go better.” To be able to come back to it throughout my career. And\u00a0it’s\u00a0honestly been the making of me as an actor, coming to New York, doing Equus<\/em>, then that led to How to Succeed<\/em>\u00a0[in Business Without Trying<\/em>] and also\u00a0to Kill Your Darlings<\/em>, which filmed here. Those things were all so important in terms of…when I was growing up in England and doing the films there, my first movie post-Potter<\/em> [film] was Woman in Black,<\/em> and there was a lot of the crew from Harry Potter<\/em> on that movie because you simply cannot do a film in England without some crew from Harry Potter<\/em> being on it. And I think\u00a0there’s\u00a0something about still being around people who knew you when you were a child that inhibits you from growing up.\u00a0So\u00a0coming to New York and suddenly working with people where\u00a0I’m\u00a0walking in as a 19-, 20-,\u00a021-year-old\u00a0actor was\u00a0really important\u00a0for me in terms of finding myself as an adult.\u00a0<\/p>\n It’s\u00a0so interesting, because you very much could have stayed within the lane of U.K. cinema, but you made a conscious decision to work over here. And it sounds like it\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0just about cracking\u00a0the American market. It was a new challenge.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, and I really loved it.\u00a0I loved New York [City] really, really quickly.\u00a0I loved that the fact that I had done Broadway meant something here in a way that felt different than doing theater in London. I remember when I first came to New York, I went for a run in Central Park, got completely f****** lost, came out somewhere with no idea where I was. I saw a fire engine parked by the side of the road and went up to ask for directions, and one of the\u00a0firemen\u00a0was like, “Hey, you’re doing that show about the horse, right?” [Equus<\/em>.] And just the awareness that New York as a city has of theater meant that because I was doing it here, I was\u00a0immediately\u00a0something other than just Harry Potter, and I could feel that.\u00a0It was really cool.\u00a0And then I met a girl [Erin Darke] on Kill Your Darlings,<\/em> and now I have a son who’s American, so\u00a0yeah,\u00a0I’m\u00a0very much here now.\u00a0<\/p>\n You’re\u00a0very much pseudo-American.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah,\u00a0I’ve\u00a0got a green card, so, you know, for as long as that means what it means, I have a green card.\u00a0<\/p>\n We’re\u00a0proud to have you. The American sitcom is a uniquely American art form, and\u00a0you’re\u00a0now diving into network television, which has\u00a0a very different\u00a0reach and audience than cable or streaming. How does it feel?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s really exciting.\u00a0I’ve\u00a0done a substantial amount of comedy throughout my career, but I get the question all the time of, “Hey, you’re new to comedy.”\u00a0And that’s because most of what I’ve done is pretty niche.\u00a0Miracle Workers<\/em>\u00a0was\u00a0wonderful but not widely viewed.\u00a0There is something really exciting about doing something that I think is going to be of a very high quality, very funny, and also potentially seen by a lot of people.\u00a0And I think the challenge with TV in the American system is that\u00a0you’re\u00a0potentially signing on for multiple years based on one pilot, which is an insane feeling.\u00a0So\u00a0what you have to look for\u00a0is\u00a0writers you trust to maintain a certain level of brilliance for many years.\u00a0And in my opinion, you\u00a0can’t\u00a0get much better than Robert Carlock, Sam Means, Tina Fey and this whole group.\u00a0<\/p>\n You’re\u00a0staying in the New York lane, too, since\u00a0they’re\u00a0known for producing shows here.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The best. We filmed the show in Yonkers. It’s\u00a040 minutes from my house, I get to come home and be with my kid. Both from an artistic and practical standpoint, this show is a real dream.\u00a0<\/p>\n You’ve\u00a0worked with producers Robert Carlock, Sam Means and Tina Fey before on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt<\/em>, but a lot of your comedy has been\u00a0a very unique, niche kind. What is it like working alongside people who have really built their careers together, like Tracy Morgan and Robert Carlock, and keeping pace with them?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I think it\u00a0got\u00a0better and better\u00a0throughout the season.\u00a0But even as a starting point, they know how to use me really well.\u00a0They are\u00a0very good\u00a0at writing for actors. How they write for Tracy is amazing. The lines, particularly with Tracy’s character, there are line readings that are accessible to Tracy that are inaccessible to 99 percent of actors. Because he is who he\u00a0is\u00a0and he is funny in the way that he is, and they know how to use that. And I think similarly with me, they get\u00a0better and better\u00a0throughout the series as they find out what my comedic strengths are. But look,\u00a0ultimately\u00a0they’re\u00a0just\u00a0really nice, good people.\u00a0They’re\u00a0a pleasure to be around. From Kimmy Schmidt<\/em>, and then we did an animated show, Mulligan<\/em>, where I would see them on Zooms every so often and always think, “Oh man, I would love to do something more substantial with these guys,” because I like their brains.\u00a0So\u00a0when this script came through, I thought I\u00a0probably could\u00a0not even read it and just say yes, because\u00a0there’s\u00a0no way\u00a0I’m\u00a0turning down a Tracy Morgan, Robert Carlock and Tina Fey show. And Tracy is crazily optimistic. Tracy was running around on\u00a0set\u00a0being like, “We’re\u00a0gonna\u00a0run for 10 years!” More optimism than I can cope with.\u00a0I’m\u00a0like, “By saying this out loud, we are drawing bad luck to ourselves.”\u00a0So\u00a0I had to counteract it by saying, “No, no, we’re\u00a0gonna\u00a0be canceled. It’s\u00a0gonna\u00a0be terrible.”\u00a0Hopefully,\u00a0we land somewhere in the\u00a0middle, because\u00a0I\u00a0would\u00a0do this show for many years.\u00a0<\/p>\n I watched the first two episodes; it is so funny. And\u00a0you’re\u00a0so right that they write for the actor. There is one line Tracy says about books being movies for the mind…\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n “Books are brain movies!” I read that line, and I was like, “Right, I can hear him saying it, and it makes sense!”\u00a0<\/p>\n And your comedic voice\u00a0seems to be\u00a0anxiety, the\u00a0panic meltdown, like what you were just saying about being like, “No, we’re\u00a0gonna\u00a0be canceled.” Do you feel\u00a0that?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n A little, totally. I think\u00a0I’ve\u00a0realized my comedic voice is a lot about speed and quickness, which is really suited to this style of comedy, which is very snappy, jokey and wordy. I love comedy based around\u00a0a well-written\u00a0sentence\u00a0and real jokes. And\u00a0I think there\u00a0are things about myself that when I was a teenager,\u00a0I’d\u00a0see them as negatives, like being panicky or nervous. When\u00a0you’re\u00a0a teenager,\u00a0you’re\u00a0so obsessed with being cool.\u00a0But growing up, and particularly doing more and more comedy, I’ve learned that leaning into the parts of myself that are very uncool is actually where most of the funny stuff comes from.\u00a0I think I actually learned it from How to Succeed<\/em>.\u00a0There’s\u00a0something about recognizing that whatever natural weirdness you have, whether\u00a0it’s in\u00a0physicality, tone, or expressiveness, is not something to be\u00a0shied\u00a0away from.\u00a0It’s\u00a0something to\u00a0be embraced. I was so self-conscious about how I looked\u00a0as\u00a0a teenager that at some point I was like, “Well, if I just do nothing with my face and I’m not expressive at all, nothing can go wrong.” Growing up as an actor has been a lot about accepting that your face is\u00a0gonna\u00a0do stuff when\u00a0you’re\u00a0emoting, and\u00a0that’s\u00a0fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n I started in standup, and there were times I would perform for straight crowds and think they\u00a0weren’t\u00a0going to get anything I was doing. But they would\u00a0laugh, because\u00a0I was leaning into my differences within that space.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n It goes sort of full circle, where there’s actually something really cool about somebody who is\u00a0fine with\u00a0looking weird. That kind of self-acceptance is conversely cooler than anybody trying to posture as cool, which I now recognize as the least f****** cool thing you could\u00a0possibly be\u00a0doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n I have accepted I will never be cool in any capacity.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n So\u00a0you have become cool.\u00a0That’s\u00a0the paradox.\u00a0<\/p>\n You play a very high-strung director in the show, and\u00a0you’ve\u00a0worked with a lot of directors over the years. Are you mining from that field for this character?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I’ve\u00a0definitely seen\u00a0directors get stressed and overwhelmed by blue screen stuff, and\u00a0I’ve\u00a0seen somebody have the kind of meltdown that my guy has. But I think\u00a0he’s\u00a0more mined from pretentious English film bros that I might have known. And as a documentarian, we were trying to figure out who the real-life parallel is, and\u00a0it’s\u00a0sort of Louis Theroux, even though\u00a0it’s\u00a0not quite.\u00a0It’s\u00a0just hard\u00a0to think of who a very highbrow documentary director is who also appears on camera a lot.\u00a0That’s\u00a0quite rare. Did Nick Broomfield do that, maybe?\u00a0<\/p>\n A little bit,\u00a0yeah.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n So\u00a0I feel like\u00a0it’s\u00a0those guys. But I\u00a0don’t\u00a0want to say it would be disparaging to Louis Theroux that\u00a0I’m\u00a0comparing my character to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n He is fantastic. Tracy Morgan is a\u00a0really unique\u00a0individual within the American comedy landscape.\u00a0He’s\u00a0created a persona that’s both lovable and undefinable. The characters are always similar but also always different. What is it like creating a story with an actor like Tracy, and how does he compare to others\u00a0you’ve\u00a0worked with?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n You\u00a0can’t\u00a0compare Tracy to any other actor\u00a0you’ve\u00a0ever worked with.\u00a0There’s\u00a0a wildness and unpredictability\u00a0to\u00a0him. I think the ways we overlap are that we both love what we\u00a0do,\u00a0we both feel\u00a0very lucky\u00a0to be doing it, and we both love the social element of being on set. Somebody, I\u00a0think it\u00a0was Tina, said about Tracy that what he does\u00a0can’t\u00a0be taught and\u00a0can’t\u00a0be learned. It is just\u00a0completely\u00a0natural comedy. He is one of the funniest people\u00a0I’ve\u00a0ever spent time\u00a0around. And he will say, every day, five of the most insane things\u00a0you’ve\u00a0ever heard a human being say. But then\u00a0he’s\u00a0also incredibly sweet and will tell you some\u00a0story\u00a0about his childhood that makes you want to hug him and breaks your heart.\u00a0He’s\u00a0capable of huge vulnerability and real openness. So very quickly you go from, “Oh, this guy is crazy and funny,” to, “I really care about\u00a0him,\u00a0and I want to make sure he’s having a good time,” because of everything\u00a0he’s\u00a0been through with the [2014 car] crash and the recovery.\u00a0You’re\u00a0like, “Yeah, you should be having a good time now.”\u00a0There’s\u00a0a time where\u00a0you’re\u00a0building trust, and I think now\u00a0we’ve\u00a0gotten to a place where Tracy knows that I really love\u00a0him\u00a0and\u00a0I’m\u00a0looking out for him.\u00a0I think we built a really nice relationship through this first season, so if we get to make more, which I hope we do, I’ll definitely be picking up from there.\u00a0<\/p>\n I definitely think you will.\u00a0Over the years, you very much could have gone in the direction of being the star of everything, but\u00a0you’ve\u00a0leaned into the ensemble, whether\u00a0it’s\u00a0Merrily We Roll Along <\/em>or this show.\u00a0You’re\u00a0always a standout talent, but\u00a0you’re\u00a0also a part of an ensemble of standout talents. Has that been a conscious choice?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n No, I mean, very, very quickly I was\u00a0like,\u00a0I want to be good in supporting roles as well. I\u00a0don’t\u00a0need to always be the lead. Like,\u00a0there’s\u00a0something exciting about the pressure of leading something weird where every day\u00a0it’s\u00a0gonna\u00a0be me singing and dancing and playing the accordion. But I also love building\u00a0a show\u00a0with an ensemble. One of the best pieces of acting advice\u00a0I’ve\u00a0ever gotten, and I\u00a0can’t\u00a0remember who gave it to me, was: When all else fails, try and make the person\u00a0you’re\u00a0in the\u00a0scene with\u00a0look good. Just make that\u00a0the focus, because it stops\u00a0you\u00a0thinking about yourself. And if you only want to play leads, you cut yourself off from some\u00a0really fun\u00a0parts, because the lead very often\u00a0has to\u00a0be the still center around which everything is going crazy. And sometimes\u00a0it’s\u00a0more fun to be part of the stuff\u00a0that’s\u00a0going crazy.\u00a0<\/p>\n A lot of actors who had career-defining roles as children\u2014I’m\u00a0thinking of someone like Jodie Foster\u2014have to\u00a0navigate creating new identities for themselves while not escaping the thing that made them who they are.\u00a0You’ve\u00a0done that very successfully. How do you feel about the ongoing legacy of Harry Potter<\/em> alongside everything\u00a0you’ve\u00a0gone on to do?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n For me, people were always presenting me with a binary when I was leaving Potter<\/em>: Either you still respect and love Potter<\/em>, or you go off and do crazy things, which means you must have hated Potter <\/em>all along. Whenever I was doing Equus <\/em>or Kill Your Darlings<\/em>, the questions would always be, “Are you doing this to put Potter<\/em> out of people’s minds?” And\u00a0it’s\u00a0like,\u00a0I guess I\u00a0want people to see me as other things, but it was never in my head that any one job would suddenly make people forget about Harry Potter<\/em>.\u00a0And also, I don’t want people to forget about Harry Potter<\/em>.\u00a0I love\u00a0doing\u00a0those movies. I love that people love those movies. It always seemed much simpler to me than that. I remember reading an interview with Robert Smith from The Cure where he was asked, “Do you feel a bit silly still putting on all the makeup to do the shows now that you’re 60?” And he was like, “No, because somebody is going to be coming to those shows as a teenager for the first time, and I don’t want to see\u00a0them getting\u00a0all dressed up and then see me act like I’m ashamed of it.”\u00a0I’ve always thought that was a really lovely way of viewing it.\u00a0If people come up to me and want to talk about Potter <\/em>and what\u00a0it’s\u00a0meant to them,\u00a0I’m\u00a0always delighted to hear that. That can sit very comfortably alongside all the weird stuff\u00a0I’ve\u00a0done since. And I\u00a0don’t\u00a0expect people to ever forget about Potter<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newsweek.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cYou can’t compare Tracy [Morgan] to any other actor you’ve ever worked with.\u201d\u00a0 Daniel Radcliffe on\u00a0starring with\u00a0Tracy Morgan in\u00a0The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, his Broadway journey and\u00a0Harry Potter: \u201cI love that people love those movies.\u201d\u00a0 PARTING SHOT\u00a0PODCAST WITH H. ALAN SCOTT:SUBSCRIBE ON\u00a0APPLE PODCASTS,\u00a0SPOTIFY, OR\u00a0WHEREVER YOU GET PODCASTS. Editor’s Note: This conversation has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2295064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[344468,329536,310989,421397,421398,444705,366147],"class_list":["post-2295063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-broadway","tag-daniel-radcliffe","tag-harry-potter","tag-parting-shot","tag-parting-shot-podcast","tag-the-fall-and-rise-of-reggie-denkins","tag-tracy-morgan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Daniel-Radcliffe-on-Tracy-Morgan-\u2018You-Cant-Compare-Him-to.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2295063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2295065,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295063\/revisions\/2295065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2295064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2295063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2295063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2295063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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