Daniel Radcliffe’s latest film, and passion project, ‘Swiss Army Man,’ has him playing a flatulent corpse, with some unusual powers.
The actor has selected his roles carefully, drawn to their originality. Tamsen Fadal sat down to talk with him about that and his brand new role on stage that will have everyone snap chatting.
Daniel Radcliffe is a triple threat…movies, plays and even rapping!
“[‘Swiss Army Man‘] is a very hard film to define and that’s one of the things I love about it,” Radcliffe said about his new movie. “It’s a buddy movie in which one of the buddies is dead. It is a comedy and one of our directors described it the other day as being an olive branch from the wierdos to the closet wierdos.”
Web extra: How would ‘Manny’ help me get out of a jam in the newsroom
Radcliffe stars Manny, a dead man who washes up on shore. He plays opposite, Paul Dano, who plays Hank, a suicidal man stranded on that desert island.
“The hardest part about playing dead is not blinking, especially when Paul is giving this amazing performance in a scene and my job is literally just to lay here and be still,” Radcliffe smiled. “It’s very galling when he did this and then I blinked and screwed up the scene.”
I had to ask, who he’d wanted to stranded on an island with, dead or alive.
“Well, I mean my girlfriend!” he said. Good answer!
This versatile performer is also headed back to the stage in Privacy.
Web extra: Radcliffe gives us his opinion on social media
“We are the only show in town where you can leave your phone on and I believe charging stations are also being made available,” he explained. “It is all about what it means to be a private person in world of social media. At the moment I’m doing this play and you feel like you are actually doing something quite important as an actor, i’ts not highly political but it does have a point and can make people think, that’s always very exciting!”
Also exciting? Memorizing difficult lyrics like the alphabet aerobics on the Tonight Show.
Web extra: Radcliffe remembers meeting Donald Trump for the first time
“It was one of the coolest things in my career!” Radcliffe said. “I don’t think he thought I could do that, it was incredible!”
‘Swiss Army Man’ opens today (June 24) in New York and nationwide next week. Previews for Privacy start July 5th.
