Daniel Radcliffe

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0:40And with big, bold flavors to enjoy, like blood orange, blackberry, cranberry, and more, it's time to go all in on taste. Unleash the flavor. Unleash White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors. 8 % alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer Works. Chicago, Illinois. I'm sorry to draw back the curtain, But I'm trying to be like as interesting as I can while telling you actually nothing. Like that's my... Challenge accepted. Well, Daniel Radcliffe, welcome to One Night Stand. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. No, thrilled to have you here. And you've chosen some great books for us to talk about.

1:14I hope so. Thank you. You have. Have you always been a big reader? No, not particularly. I think I was definitely like one of the kids that Harry Potter like got them into reading. I hadn't. I had read the first two before we started filming. um and then it was like after i got the job i was like right here i guess i need to need to read all of these now um and i got into them and they were great and it was actually when i was about 14 that i um that i started suddenly like it it hit me and i and i started reading everything that i could um and there's a there's actually a song by a uh an irish band called the divine comedy um they made a song called the book lovers which i attribute a lot of my the what i've read to because it's basically it's a very strange song it's a list of authors set to music and after every author there's like a weird soundbite like it might be a quote it might be a noise and as a teenager I was like oh I want to figure out what the sounds mean to the author so it became like my reading list and I still have not completed it but it's definitely it's made me read things I probably wouldn't have that's incredible yeah it's a it's a good song I'm gonna have to look it up yeah did you get advanced copies of the books the Harry Potter books with no you had to wait till like drop day oh yeah absolutely i remember in like in the movie the devil wears prada there's like a subplot that is like she has to find a plot a version of harry potter before it's i remember we all saw that and we were like good luck like i don't know of anybody i think you know i think famously i think alan rickman was like the the only person from the cast who was told anything in in advance and certainly we didn't get anything that's a fun way to get into reading though i remember my actually i was on the phone to my nephew earlier and he's 11 and he was like what are you reading at the moment and he was like I'm on um the the goblet of fire and I was like that's so sweet because I forget that they get they get so into it and you get and there is something about like see like kids reading like big books it's like amazing I know and I used to stay up all night just like so fun okay well you've chosen some great books I thought we could start with the song of Achilles by Madeleine Marat yeah tell me what you love about that book i mean i love that i don't have to read the iliad now um i so i did the odyssey at school and so i was sort of like familiar enough um and i you know the iliad's always been one that i'm like i probably won't read that in full but reading this like amazing interpretation of it where you feel like you do you get what i'm assuming is the story of a lot of it um it's a beautiful love story it's so well and compellingly written like i've been i'd read a bunch of books before i read that i'd read like a lot of i'm somebody that if i start a book i cannot not finish it which can result in me like reading things for a long time yeah i'm not particularly enjoying and um so i just got out of one of those books and then i read song of achilles and it was so nice just to like not be able to wait to get back to a book again and just like be reading it all the time um it also does like it's a beautiful story it's a beautiful it's beautifully written it does like the most spectacular job i find of like taking us to like the lowest point you could possibly be near the end and like everything just tying together and i think i want to say like maybe the final three sentences of the book and gives you enough joy and hope that you can you can walk away from it sort of feeling good without it having felt sentimental or mortgage at any totally it's just it's an amazingly written it's like someone coming above water and like that gasp of like yes oh my god thank god thank god i can go on with my life um but yeah it's just and i haven't yet read uh cersei but i'm but i've been told that it's very very good i've been told it's fantastic and i've been told that actually if you're into like the the myths of the greek myth even more than the the sort of the the homeric things that it's it's it scratches that itch as well it's really beautiful and apparently there there's an hbo adaptation of that coming in a parter okay but i want them to do this as well i know yes it's sort of it's fascinating that one got picked first i know in some ways yeah but yeah i'm i'm just i'm i think it's a really like this is a beautiful beautiful romantic book it's so it's such a lovely love story and there's also such like accountability in their relationship with each other like patrick is really like is holding achilles to account right in a way that's the only person that can exactly yeah no it's really it's and there were bits of it that i remember i remember like enough of having been told about certain chapters in the Iliad or the others that I remembered I remember moments happening and going oh this is really brilliantly done or that you are knitting in but I don't know I just don't know how you could it's also such a skill to write something set in the set in the past in any way but particularly that far in the past where you are the where the dialogue doesn't it doesn't feel forced it doesn't feel like you're forcing the time period of it at all it just feels like you're really getting to to be there and um yeah just like amazing amazing work it's so human and yeah it's really it's interesting i was curious how you you know the book has a lot of sort of theories of different you see lots of different types of leadership um you know and agamemnon is sort of like this one that the more pressure he's under the worse he becomes and you know i mentioned you earlier that i went to see your play on friday night and i wonder how that is when you're sort of like anchoring something like that being a leader on your own sets like do you feel what feel conscious of your leadership style in that way yeah i actually feel like um it's an immense privilege to be a leader on on a film set or on a play because you have the chance to set the tone i mean there was um you know something i it's something i i did notice or become aware of on potter was that because like the whole movie was being led by three kids who were kind of pretty happy-go-lucky and having a really nice time and also really getting on with you know when when older actors were coming in who perhaps would be grumpier on other sets that they were on I think it was quite hard for them to then do that on a set with a bunch of like happy kids who also like you know the camera team or the costume team or the makeup team they were all like our family on those so again older actors couldn't come in and like be horrible to anyone because they were oh no these kids like this is their family um so from there And I think it's a privilege to get to set the tone on something.

7:31It's my opinion that nobody should ever be leaving work feeling worse than they did when they arrived. And as an actor, you can be a really big part of like, it's not entirely on you. Like if you've got nice leads on a film, but the director is a tyrant, there's only so much you can protect people from that feeling. But when if you've got like I always think if you've got if the first assistant if the first AD, the director, the DOP and the lead actors, if they're all like decent people, it's hard for anyone else to screw it up too much. Like you should still have a nice time. Oh, that's good.

8:03And who wants to not have a nice time? Like, especially when we're acting. I can understand getting annoyed or shouty if you're a surgeon. Yeah, we're not in the NHS. Or you're working in the military or working in the hospital. Like that's that's a different environment. But we're, you know, I've had this thing recently with my kid where he's starting to get to an age where like the other day he saw me on TV for the first time in an ad for the TV show I'm doing. And he just said with a tone that was like, I'm not crazy. Right. He looked around and said to his mom. And then sort of like, you know, your job is sort of bullshit when you can't explain it to a child.

8:41Yeah. Like you. They understand firemen. They understand police. They understand doctors. Because when you're having to be an actress like, well, we tell stories and we help, you know, the books you read. Well, it's like we help people tell stories like those books. So you're like, yeah, no, we can't. Nobody, nobody can be an annoying, crazy asshole while you're doing something like that. I also feel so always feel sorry for the kids that are called like Nepo babies, because I'm like, if you learn that that's your parents job and that there's something you can do to earn a living. I'm like, I can see why it feels so compelling.

9:08I know they just have to get better at answering the question. The only one that's done it right is Alison Williams. Alison Williams and a couple of others who were just like, yeah, I did it. And I am a Nepo baby. And I and of course, like, wouldn't you have taken that opportunity? I feel like I'm not that I'm not like Nepo baby in the same way. But like my parents were in the industry. So like it's what I'm although I'm saying all this, I would love my child not to do what I do for many reasons. But one of them is that, like, yeah, you you avoid the Nepo baby thing if you just go into, you know.

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10:17But Ultra is a whole lineup now. You've got Strawberry Dreams, Blue Hawaiian, Sunrise, and Vice Guava. And they all bring the monster energy punch. So if you've been living in the white can, branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe. And every single one is zero sugar. Tap the banner to learn more. become a tree surgeon you know they'll just do something different you're you're nobody's going to be comparing us no exactly because that would be exhausting i also like the bit where um when they arrive um at the encampment on the beach and there's a there's a question of whether patroclus should sleep in the same tent as achilles and he goes he's like in an achilles goes patroclus i've given enough to them i will not give them this and which i think he's so like but how do you walk that line in your own life because i feel like you've given given a lot to people and then keeping that boundary for yourself i mean i think it's something that you have to that i have become better at as i have as i have grown up um and the importance of there being some things that are just for you and just for offhand me like my you know i don't um i'm very happy to talk about my son i'm a very proud father but like his name i try not to say i'm sure to get up one day or whatever his like there are certain things you know people say to me about like um people very often ask the question of how did it feel to grow up on camera and my response is always that like i didn't like i grew up while filming things but the key moments for growing up like my first kiss my first date my foot you know whatever it is that was all private and that was all stuff that does is forever you know just mine um and i do think you know it's the advice i give to to people when i can like the art of doing interviews and i'm i'm sorry to draw back the curtain but i'm trying to be like as interesting as I can while telling you actually nothing like that's my challenge acceptance yeah you know I mean that's that that's that you know you want to you want to be you want to be like a willing participant in interviews and I want to be you know interesting and help you know people sell the show or come see the play or whatever it is that we're doing but I also think it is really important I think I used to think that when I was young when I was like 21 and coming out of Potter for the first time I I was sort of thinking like okay the closer the gap is between or the the less of a gap between the real me and the perception of me than the happier I will be.

12:36And that's true to an extent. But you also realize that I would at that point, I was talking about like my drinking a lot and I was talking about why I was stopping. And I feel like I wanted all that out there. And then I very quickly realized that actually, the more you say about that, people just have more questions. You don't ever answer anything definitively. It just provokes more questions. So you kind of start to but you know, that's especially when you become famous young like there's never a blueprint for it and you've got to just like you've got to figure that stuff out well you've done it so elegantly and so and I think I admire so much the work that you choose as well I think you choose so creatively and interestingly well I'm very lucky to be able to choose like most people can't yeah most actors absolutely have zero autonomy in their career and so to be able to you know pick things basically just based on the the criteria of like will I have a good time doing this do I think this is something that's going to make me happy to do yeah that's a real you know yeah a real luxury but i feel like with um every brilliant thing there was also you know i feel like i mean correct me if i'm wrong but it's it's such an interesting project to put in the world because of its themes as well it's probably not just enjoyment for you but it's like it's got a really beautiful message yeah it does and it's really um i think it's reading something that handles such heavy topics as as suicide and depression like and and deals with them but also manages to do it in a way that is balanced out with humor and with sort of appropriately with humor and the humor is good and yeah and and you and i think to to model a character where he is talking about really heavy things but from the point of view of somebody that is now fine yeah is a nice thing to sort of have out there that you we don't have to like i think there's there's almost a fear or a stigma around mental illness or mental health and depression that to talk about it is to risk being infected by it and and to risk letting it in and actually like something only becomes dangerous when it cannot be talked about and and so it's it's lovely to have a show that really does deal with all that very directly but manages to find a very life-affirming joyous way of of doing all of it um and yeah and like there's a line actually in the show uh which is listed as a brilliant thing which is reading something which articulates perfectly something you feel but would never been able to express yourself and i feel like as an actor to me that's the thing that like this show every brilliant thing um swiss army man is another one of them where whenever you get to work on something that you're like oh this is this is like a this is saying something beautiful about a part of my personality that i wish to express but could never have found a way to do that.

15:20Totally. Are you a therapy person? I am. Not as much as I should be recently. No, me too. My mum was nearly sectioned when I was 13 and I remember it vividly and then how valuable she found therapy. So I've never had that kind of British aversion to it. Because in the UK it's different. Yeah, it's definitely still different. Recently Ariana Grande was talking about the Nickelodeon documentary and she said that she thinks that children who are on sex, it should be mandated that they have therapy available to them. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Yeah. And in fact, I think when I, I had, I've had some conversations with people that are working on the on the new Potter series.

15:56I think that that is something that has been, you know, I don't know, I'm not involved, but I think that's something that they are thinking about this time around as well, which is great. It's so great. I mean, yeah, I think it's, it's, you know, being a child actor and things is like, whether or not you make it out of that in a good frame of mind is so, is so much luck. I was so lucky with a the parents I had but also like with so many people on set who looked after me and like being surrounded by the right people at the right times was so important. But I definitely think and I think there's you know, there's been some really, really tragic stories in the last few years.

16:34there was a there was a very young man who took his life who was a young actor and in talking to people about why that happened the thing that I have seen mentioned was that he was somebody as as would I have been who you know was viewed by other people of like you well you got it all you're an actor you're so young you've got money you've got this and it and so you feel like you kind of don't have a right to complain and i think that that atmosphere is so hard to get past that actually some sort of mandated therapy would probably be a really really great thing totally and make it for everyone that it's like even if you are healthy and feel great this is how you stay that way right yes exactly just the normal right exactly yes normalize it like you have it start therapy before you need it exactly you've got a language to yeah yeah did they give you much resources as kids or is it more like um when we were kids no but it was the 2000s in england like nobody was nobody was thinking that way um but and i and but i but i would say like it was not i i had so many good people around and i had so many people on set that were looking out for us um the that it was totally fine but you know that was more luck than anything else i just i got very lucky with the people i'm glad that you guys did get lucky because you deserve it Well, the next book that I thought we could talk about actually has two titles.

17:53In the US, it's The Professor and the Madman. And in the UK, it's The Surgeon of Crothorn. Yes. So we've got our own Philosopher's Sorcerer's Stone situation. Yes. Which is still... I'm fascinated by what happens to that in the TV show. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because we did alternate takes for everything. Stop. We shot everything twice. There's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you saw it in the rest of the world, it was Philosopher's. If you saw it in America, we had the Sorcerer's. Oh, you had to do that on set on the day. Although I feel like it was mostly Emma. I feel like Emma had to do most of the exposition for like all seven films.

18:23So she was the one who ended up saying Philosophers and Sorcerer's Stone probably the most. Oh my gosh. But yes. So tell me what you love about it. I mean, okay. It's a brilliant nonfiction. But if anybody out there is looking for a book for their dad for birthday or Christmas, I very recommend this one. it's about the making of the the oxford english dictionary which at the time so it's it's it starts off with little potted histories of the idea of dictionaries and where they came from and how they were made um and also just and what a something we take for granted is that a dictionary exists and whereas at the time like the idea of like making a book which had a definition for every word was such an insane mammoth undertaking um and so when james murray the the uh person who was like spearheaded the effort to make the oxford english dictionary when he started it was basically a they they they crowdsourced it that was how they realized that was going to be the effective way of making it so they basically um put out an ad in the times i assume um and they got people to they said you know anyone who if you can send us um a word and the earliest quotation you can find so if you know that word is in chaucer somewhere or if you know that word is some in some obscure middle english manuscript like find the reference and send us those things um and then at some point they noticed that an unbelievably high like a disproportionately high number of the entries they were being sent were from one address um and then they realized that that address was uh you know as it was called then you know an insane asylum and that the person that was sending them this was this there's one guy with a lot of time on his hands um and it's so it's really it's about the origins of the oxford english dictionary and it's about the stories of the guy who made the dictionary and this and this one chap and his sort of insane um life story and which led him to being an inmate here which led him to being a huge part of creating the dictionary as we know it today yeah and it's such i what i loved about it i mean it's got brilliant color and the writing's so funny.

20:34Like when he, I was cackling to myself at my desk when I was listening to part of it because the way he describes Lambeth is somewhere singularly unlovely where nobody of any consequences wanted to linger. Jesus, that's rough. So rough on Lambeth, but yes. It tickled me. But it's also, it's this, I think to the, we're on the mental health topic, this like quite compassionate take on people who, you know, the Dr. Minor is a doctor. he's got I think a doctorate from Yale and ends up murdering someone after he's in the American Civil War yeah and so and then actually they keep him in these very like quite humane conditions where he has like a bedroom in a library and I'm like oh it's actually quite progressive in some ways yeah and especially compared to then what happened to those places for like the next hundred years where they just became kind of warehouses where people would be left to to just rot um Yeah, no, it's a fascinating, you know, like all great kind of historical nonfiction.

21:31It's about what it's about. And then you feel like you're picking up all these details about the world at the time as well, which is, yeah, it's a great it's a great read. It's also like it's a very short read. Yeah. So it's a very quick one if you would. You know, it's it's it's not. Yeah, it's it's easily digestible. It's so fun and just so sort of. Yeah, it is. It is really interesting. And but it does feel like a very British story. I mean do you do you miss the UK much when you're not there or you do very I mean I know you're happy in New York yeah I love I love living here I miss some things about the UK like I miss my my friends the most obviously um fortunately my mum and dad spend a lot of time over here as well so that I don't have to miss them too much and they have a lot of they are able to see their grandson like all the time and you know so it's not um but yeah I miss honestly the thing I miss most is which is very weird but is quiz shows like we do a quiz better better than america frankly like there's jeopardy over here which is fantastic but like i i miss university challenge so much like it's university challenge and only connect and pointless and mastermind like there's just so many good ones and quiz game show culture exists here and it's great but like quiz show culture we have we we need to bring it over i agree yeah i miss that and i miss the sort of like collective experience that you have in the uk around those formats that because america's so big you don't have the same like after show after school viewing right yeah although does that exist in the uk now i guess probably a little bit a little bit i think well i think they stream a lot my sister's kids have tv days and non-tv days and a lot of them the times they go straight to youtube or netflix but they do sometimes watch them all like family stuff i do feel like i was talking about this the other day with somebody like the the six o 'clock to like 6 40 slot on bbc2 when we were growing up simpsons and i think fresh prince of bella yeah and it was just like that was appointment viewing totally because we only had like we only had five and four sorry i'm 88 and you're 89 so we're pretty similar we started off with four channels and then channel five yeah crazy and it was like what was that sitcom was family affairs yeah sitcom the the soap opera yeah it was it was uh yeah god what radical how how much has changed i know so how long have you been living in america for um full time since covid so like 2020 really i've been back and forth since like 2012 yeah but like yeah so one thing i find so i've been here since 2020 as well so six years now and i find it very weird not being able to vote like yeah it's a weird psychological experience where you're like in you can't help but be very invested yes but not actually having any any say it's and i'm not and i don't think we're allowed to like donate or even or like help out with yeah not volunteering or anything so it's yeah i'm i'm i have got a green card now so i'm on the track um to being able to vote and stuff on citizenship yeah citizen but um but yeah still i think at least at least four years to go yeah it is it is a weird thing i think of it all the time when people because i know i also feel weird about voting in the uk because we're not there exactly and so i'm like i don't i don't have a right to like tell people you know in my part of Birmingham what to do you know I know it's a it's a very it's a weird yeah that's why I feel like I yes that's why I feel like I want to become a citizen here because I've got I've got well I wanted to get a green card because my my son is American and I'm gonna need to be able to be here whenever I need to be here um but but definitely like it's it's a weirdly impotent feeling not being able to like get involved so it's so weirdly impotent is exactly the word um well as someone who's OED curious there are two Harry Potter words that have made it in do you know what they are muggle yes that was the first one and it got in five years early a word's meant to be around for 10 years first wow yeah okay and then there was one more quidditch yeah okay well there you go there you go i feel like that was at the back recesses of your mind i was like well what's what's truly like passing like muggle is definitely something you can hear people you i've i've heard people using almost common parlance now um and there's probably a couple of others in there that like could that would be eligible at some point i mean horcrux is an interesting concept that was the one that was debated was it debated okay cool because that does feel like that is a word for like there's like a conceptually unique thing there yeah i completely agree yeah um no it's very good one um well maybe next given we're on the topic of being brits in america where we could do how to hide an empire sure which is an incredible history book but tell me what you like about that book um again it's the kind of book that has it's it's it has the the non-fiction thread that it is following through and it's incredibly educational about this i mean america's history generally but particularly this little time in american history which was kind of fascinating because there is the way you behaved like a global power at the time was to have an empire but it kind of goes against everything america was founded on to have an empire so it's this weird little in-between phase where they were very acquisitive and took over a ton of like you know the fact that like the the red white and blue on the flag of the philippines is is because of america like the fact that you go to it i've not been to the philippines but apparently you can go there and you'll find like Lafayette streets and like all the same sort of street in Washington like the same street names that you find here um you know it's it's fascinating and it has so it has the thread that it's following through about the idea of American empire and how that has changed in different periods of time um but it's also just like one along the way you learn about so many different things like the the um the whole section about like guano mining and the guano mining fascinating industry was like such a fascinating and like the idea that before the harbor bosch process had existed that was going to be you know that kind of fertilizer was the was truly was more valuable than gold so the world was running on it and it and uh like so for a brief period in time these tiny islands became like the most valuable resources in the world and then also just like gives you an insight into like what the life of a guano miner i think you could you could make a pretty good argument for being one of the worst existences in all of history it's truly like if you think you have a bad job you should all be reading about the guano miners of the late 1800s or early 1900s um but yeah it's so it's uh i just remember there were so many things i learned about that book and it it and you know it informs everything that's happening today in a very interesting way.

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31:36I got asked that. I was once in a, I was once in, I was in a meeting once and somebody looked at me and went, do you go to the University of York? I was like, nope. And just sat down. I was like, okay, great. That's where he, I think like very often you get people who just think they know you from their life. That's exactly what it is. Alfie is the lovely and has always been the loveliest man. So lovely. And they, you know, I learned from him, like it seemed like such a positive vibe around the whole operate. I remember one time I woke up hungover and walked over to my friend's room and found him and Matthew Lewis just lying on the floor in sleeping bags i was like this is very surreal and and him and matt were like very very close and and and matt and they and they both grown into like wonderful men yeah have you seen pillion just thinking of i have not i have not seen it yet i thought i'm so like again happy for harry and like i've always been so proud of like it's weird to say you're proud of somebody that's like your age and you know growing up but like the career he's made for himself and just doing i mean doing so much theater and just like doing really great interesting work always is yeah it's amazing it's so special um but yeah the binge reading was definitely forced forced fed at university do you ever wish you'd gone to university or not no I mean there's some things just there's a bunch of like common experiences that I didn't have that I suppose I sort of used to feel like I missed out on but I I loved like what I was getting to do instead and and I feel like so much of university is time to figure out what you want to do and and I was like very set on what I wanted to do so it was just nice to kind of crack on doing it and also I did get incredible luxury at the end of Potter they asked my uh so me and Emma I I dropped out of school when I was 17 Emma carried on and did her A-levels so what that meant was that there was still at least three hours of tuition stuff a week because Emma was still doing school so in the week in the year after I had left school but while Emma was still doing it I basically got um Warner Brothers paid for my old English teacher to come in for three hours a week just to talk books not with no pressure of exams or nothing it was just like tell me so you know that's the only reason I've read chapters of like Ulysses I definitely would never have picked up on my own or stuff that like you need help but yeah it was so I I got to that was my little mini university I mean that is a tutorial experience in a nutshell it was great oh my god how incredible yeah that sounds so fun um yeah really special that's I mean I think yeah I don't think you missed out much with uni I mean it's a lot of drinking and right exactly I did that I was bad at that elsewhere so I I I found all the same parts just lately.

34:02We've all had the same experience. One thing I did wonder after, so I went to see Every Brilliant Thing on Friday and I did a bit of audience participation. Which one did you read out? Shall I give you the number and see if you know it or read it out? Do you want the number? Give me the number. 995. 995 is Buster Keaton. Yes. I don't know the whole line, but I know that that's... Yeah, it was brilliant. It was so fun. I was so terrified. And my friend was just sniggering. She was like, I can't believe you're doing this, but it was so fun. But I kind of, one of the, I've sort of made my notes during it, Oh, were you also a laugh when I got to Whitstable?

34:30Oh. Did you laugh? There's a moment where I mentioned Whitstable. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, I love that. And I was like, somebody laughed. And I was like, okay, we know that at least one English person is in it. If Whitstable gets a laugh. Also, when you gave someone a book back, was that a Harry Potter book? No, on Friday, do you know what it was? Don't worry. There's a lot of Harry Potter books being offered. And I am offering a lot of them back. No, that was a copy of the play. It was a copy of Every Brilliant Thing. Oh, okay. And I was, in retrospect, now there's stuff I could have done with it.

34:54and I'm annoyed that I gave it back because I could have thought of something but in the moment I was not I was not quick enough no well one thing I was just fascinated by is like that to me is like probably peak stressful experience what you're doing like which I know is I'm not an actor obviously but also just do you get a kick from the being out of your comfort zone yes I mean I get like there's something whenever I find something because there's a lot about this play that comes very naturally to me like the character itself is something that sometimes you just read something and you go like oh this just sits in my voice really naturally like I sound like I could be this person and there's a little bit in terms of how he talks about into using humor to avoid talking about how you're feeling or and to talk about the way he talks about music there's a lot I have in common with him um but then there's this huge other part of the play which is so out of my comfort zone in terms of the the improvisation and the the um audience participation um but yeah there's something thrilling about that there's something really exciting about getting to push yourself and and also there is something that like is enjoyable about it as well like the books when it like sometimes you'll get two books that are kind of like you know and you just get through the moment they're not great but sometimes if you can find something funny to say about it it's great and if something like the other day we had this wonderful thing happened where like the other um was it a man playing sam or a woman sorry it was a man so we had a guy playing um sam the other two nights ago who when I did the books I gave him the book and he'd read it and so he knew what it was about so I could ask him what it was about and he just immediately knew and then there's like something really like magical has happened like it was really yeah so yeah I love all those moments it is it's a dual feeling of like terror and delight.

36:35Have you always been were you like an adrenaline junkie as a kid or do you think that you just got exposed to so much like early on that now you need a bit more yeah I'm not quite like the guy from uh free solo who's just like amygdala has just shrunk to nothing um but like I I definitely think there is it's an interesting because normally when you're doing a play you know the time the period we're in right now in preview like you're still terrified you're still nervous but normal but you have the prospect of like it will get normal like I'll be able to do this without feeling so stressed about it I don't think I ever will on this play I think it will be terrifying a little bit up until the final performance just because that half an hour before the play where we're casting it is so frenetic every time and um but yeah but it is I I think that I did get to do a lot of um really cool like stunts and action work as a kid that I I absolutely no one will let me do now and it's frankly crazy that let me do it when I was a kid but like I loved it and um so yeah maybe there is a sense now I just do that with uh by picking like yeah loads of audience participation what kind of stunts did you have to just like lots of the ones on the movie yeah like I did I did like I mean I did six weeks of underwater filming for the fourth movie I I did a 40 I it's probably 35 foot but I'm rounding I was I did a 40 foot uh roof uh free fall down a roof in the fourth Harry Potter film they let me do it three times um as a 15 year old oh my god yeah it was great like and again I've been on sets since then that they absolutely would not let but every lunchtime on potter i would go and train with the stunt department so they knew that i was like up for it and actually capable of doing a lot um so they and to be clear i had a wire on me when i did the full they but they just don't you know it's there in case and they just let you go um and i did get up to the top of like they asked me to do it and i was like yeah yeah yeah sure and you know i was friends with all the stunt guys so i wanted to really like show them i was okay with it and then they brought me up in the cherry picker in the jcb thing took me up to my start marker i was looking down going oh shit like i have this is maybe more than i should have said yes to but we're here now um and then it was it was great calm back down yeah oh that's so funny good for you that's amazing um well last i thought we could talk about the master of margarita yeah one of your favorite books i gather yeah tell me what you love about that i mean i always say like i am not a religious person this book makes me wish that i was like it is the most beautiful story and the most beautiful version of christianity which is like entirely about forgiveness um and the power of that um and so it's it is it's set on in two timelines one of which is about the devil coming to moscow in 1925 and bringing this kind of retinue of extraordinary characters with him um but and he needs to come there because he uh every i think it's every thousand years he hosts a ball and the the the sort of guest of honor at the ball has to be a girl named margarita it's one of those great things where you're just like if they were making a movie of this now that would all be explained yeah and you're just like no explanation is death just have it this is just how it exists um and so that's one timeline and the other timeline is is kind of about the like the forgiveness of pontius pilot for the crucifixion of jesus christ um and then those timelines meet and you it does things that like a book it's it's insane that a book can do it's so beautiful it's so funny it's so exciting the characters like there's a six foot tall cat called behemoth who has a pistol and a drinking problem and just i mean not a problem so he's got a drinking solution he's just like he's constantly drinking vodka and he's just like uh you know it's as a i think i read it for the first time as like a 17 18 year old um and it's been something that i just think about all the time still and it's just for what the limits of like literature can do because it's just so sprawling and huge and fun and it's also it's about writing it's about the process of writing the master is somebody who has written something and then almost destroyed it all the the writing of the book itself there's a line in the one of the very famous quotes from the book is manuscripts don't burn.

40:41And that was also, you know, it's particularly relevant to this book because the book was written in secret from I think 1926 to 1940. It was hidden from Stalin. His wife found it in his desk. His wife also, at one point, I believe he had tried to burn a huge amount of it and she rescued it. Yeah, it's a really, it's just an incredible story that I saw someone the other day call Gabriel Garcia Marquez the father of magical realism look i'm not trying to take anything away from gabriel garcia marquez but i do think that this book if you're gonna if you're gonna find like a starting point it's it's just it's so uh wonderful and yeah and you went to moscow for your 21st birthday yeah tell me about that i went to moscow for my 21st i mean you know i was drinking at the time so it was crazy yeah um And it was, yeah, and I went to visit his, you know, the apartment where he, which the sort of the main apartment in the book is based on.

41:41And to just sort of be able to walk around and see some of the areas that he describes, like the book begins with a man being decapitated by a tram. And so, like, you know, you'll get to see where that is supposed to have happened. And then I also, another one of Bulgakov's books is A Country Doctor's Notebook, which was then made into a TV series, A Young Doctor's Notebook with me and Jon Hamm. So to be able to then like get to bring one of his things to life was so, you know, exciting and one of the great pleasures of my life. To get to like the things you're passionate about, you then get to like work on it.

42:18So cool. yeah i loved um you know i was talking to one of my colleagues before about muscle it and this idea of the the organization that controls creative output and i'm it's kind of striking i mean i feel like you started your career obviously within the studio system where everything is controlled by a million different stakeholders and i'm sure a lot of decisions about that and were made in boardrooms as much as creative rooms and now i feel like you've really chosen projects with with a kind of more does that feel fair like a small yeah although i think it's it's I think there's it's interesting because I too would make that assumption about Potter where I was and I think it probably is more that now like when I hear about like the Star Wars movies again I remember when the when Potter finished a lot of those guys went on to Star Wars and it was there was a sense immediately of like oh like we're not really allowed to have scripts here like we we get scenes or we get sides like it's nothing is disseminated in the same way whereas like there was something like I feel like Potter existed just at the end of the year the kind of analog era where like it was you know we were still getting pages of script revisions every day and that was it was more it was less done but and actually warner brothers really left us to it more than you would think i think like you know i'm sure david hayman and chris columbus were getting pressure from them but they also i think realized that like this is gonna we can kind of just let them especially after the first two they really let us crack on so it was it was nice um But yeah, I think I am.

43:43I definitely got I got given this sort of, you know, amazing start where I got to watch all these amazing actors for 10 years and work on these really big movies. But also it kind of meant that like the allure of like the big movie just didn't. I was like, yeah, I've done that. I would like to work on something where we film more than one scene a day now. And that was right. So like going from Potter to Woman in Black or To Kill Your Darlings and was actually like so exciting and has continued to be like I love working at the pace that I get to work at now. And I think it's just, you know, when you do the most commercially successful thing you will ever do right at the beginning of your career, it frees you from the want to like try to do the most commercially successful thing you're ever going to do.

44:35So you're just like, right, let's just do stuff that's fun and that I think has a either that's going to make people laugh and make, you know, people enjoy watching it or that has like a message that is worth, you know, creating in some way. There's kind of nothing in between for me. Either has to be really silly and stupid and fun or really meaningful. Oh, I love it. Well, I feel like you've got the perfect combo with every brilliant thing. It really, I loved it so much. Thank you so much. That's really, really nice. And I felt bad that I didn't when you came over and I was like, I'm interviewing you on Monday.

45:04because I was like, what the fuck do I say about that? No, but that was the right thing. So I wouldn't have wanted you to be able to enjoy the show. That's what I thought as well. So I was like, so I could observe it all, but it was brilliant. And thank you so much for doing this. I loved reading your books. Thank you so much for reading them. You were a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.

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