BBC Radio 1 podcast ‘6 Degrees from Jamie and Spencer’ speaks to Daniel Radcliffe

BBC Radio 1 podcast ‘6 Degrees from Jamie and Spencer’ speaks to Daniel Radcliffe
“Immediately after Potter, I was like ‘No I’m doing other things’, but now I’ve grown more and more aware of what a special and cool thing it was”

In this week’s episode of BBC Radio 1 podcast, ‘6 Degrees from Jamie and Spencer’, the duo finally track down actor Daniel Radcliffe. He opens up about his new movie ‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’, how he gets into character and the legacy of Harry Potter.

In the episode, Spencer shares that he had several call-backs to play Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter film series, which leads Daniel to reveal that he enjoys talking about Harry Potter in interviews saying: “It was ten years of my life, it was a job I loved doing and we had a great time, so I’m genuinely very happy to talk about it and actually probably more now than immediately after Potter. Immediately after Potter, I was like, ‘no I’m doing other things’ but now I’ve grown more and more aware of what a special and cool thing it was.”

The conversation with the duo focuses on Daniel’s acting and how he got into character to play “Weird Al” Yankovic. He explains: “I’m pretty much the furthest away from method acting you get. I’ll stay in the accent but I don’t need people to call me Weird Al all day or anything like that. When there is stuff to get into as a character, skills to learn, certain physicality then I love getting into that….I think it’s just I don’t really have a process that goes beyond reading the script and trying to understand the character as best as I can. Make-up, hair and costume do amazing work and sort of do the transformation for you.”

He also went onto share about playing Weird Al with him in the room saying: “This was a nice hybrid situation this film, because it is a real person and this person was on set and was supportive, but also it’s such a crazy depiction of that real person that I’m not walking off set like oh did I do that bit in your life right, was that okay. I didn’t feel that.

“Whereas I have been on set before where their on set and you feel a little bit ridiculous. In ‘Escape from Pretoria’ the real Tim Jenkins was there on set, we’re in a real prison and recreating moments from his life. It goes back and forth sometimes it is amazing and what a special thing to be able to do this with this man here and sometimes you go like how ridiculous is this, we’re basically playing and in costume and this was this man’s life.”

Hosted by Jamie Laing and Spencer Matthews, ‘6 Degrees from Jamie and Spencer’ sees the guys track down a megastar in six calls or less.

BBC Radio 1 6 Degrees from Jamie and Spencer is available to listen here on BBC Sounds