Daniel Radcliffe will always be known as the guy who played Harry Potter. That much is pretty much settled, but the actor has done a good job of distancing himself from that iconic role in the years since, including in the new gritty prison drama Escape From Pretoria. “I wasn’t picking projects that were weird for weird’s sake,” he told Variety when asked about his reputation for doing “off-beat” films. “Swiss Army Man was weird in that it’s about a farting corpse coming back to life and that’s not for everybody. At the same time, it’s an incredibly smart film that has something beautiful to say about being human. I’ve done Guns Akimbo, where I’ve had guns bolted to my hands, but I’ve also done Escape From Pretoria, which is really grounded in reality. I think people saw me play one thing for so long that it seems more notable that I do loads of different stuff now.”
It’s always good to remind people of the time Radcliffe starred in the farting corpse movie.
Anyway, I get why Radcliffe would want to try and disassociate himself from Harry Potter, hugely important as that role was to his career. You don’t want to get in a rut or be typecast.
With that in mind, it’s no great surprise that Radcliffe didn’t sound enthusiastic about the prospect of maybe returning to play Harry in, say, the ongoing Fantastic Beasts movies. “I don’t like say no to things, but it’s not something that I’m rushing to do,” he said. “I feel like those films have moved on and they’re doing just fine without us. I’m happy to keep it that way. I like what my life is now. I’m not saying that I’ll never go back into any franchise, but I like the flexibility that I have with my career now. And I don’t want to get into a situation where I’m signed up for one series for years in advance.”
You gotta feel for the guy a bit: he’s so closely with Harry Potter that people are asking him if he could make a cameo in the Fantastic Beasts films even though those movies are set decades before Harry was born, and even longer before he looked like Daniel Radcliffe. The movies, which are written by J.K. Rowling, are about the conflict between the wizards Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) and Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), at least in the big picture sense. They’re set to climax with a big wizard duel in 1945, so what kind of ridiculous screenwriting backflips would Rowling have to perform to even get Harry in the picture?
Also, between the bad reviews and the controversies surrounding Depp, the Fantastic Beasts movies have other problems to deal with, but that’s another story.
However, there are other stars happy to return to the world of Harry Potter, including several who will be reading stories for the audiobook version of The Tales of Beedle The Bard. Take a look:
That book is out on March 31. As for Radcliffe, Escape From Pretoria hits theaters on March 6.
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