![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20e037f3c1da82b2e2a798d473400c5094-Daniel-Radcliffe-Balazs-Gardi-lede.rhorizontal.w1100.jpg\")
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\n Thirteen days before previews.
\n Photo: Balazs Gardi for New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n
It\u2019s early afternoon in a midtown rehearsal room, Daniel Radcliffe<\/a> is in need of a volunteer from his audience, and I\u2019m the only person around who hasn\u2019t seen the play before. \u201cWould you mind playing a lecturer?\u201d he says as he approaches me. \u201cYou just really look like him.\u201d I\u2019m brought to the center of the room, handed a copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther, and told to extemporize a synopsis of the novel \u2014 that seems impossible until Radcliffe points out the large-font text on the back of the prop book with everything I need to say. He interrupts me a few times in character; he\u2019s playing an eager college student trying to process the book\u2019s depiction of depression and suicide.<\/p>\n Soon, Radcliffe\u2019s character, known only as \u201cperformer\u201d in the script, races out of the lecture with new ideas on his mind and gently escorts me back to the seat in time for the transition to the next beat. He and his directors, Duncan Macmillan and Jeremy Herrin, pause the rehearsal and go over a few notes \u2014 a curse word that slipped in when it shouldn\u2019t have, a better way to hand off the copy of Werther. \u201cI\u2019ve got to work on coming up with quick descriptions,\u201d Radcliffe says regarding the people he\u2019s planning to approach during his performances. \u201cYou\u2019re just wearing nice normal clothes, but I\u2019ll be looking for somebody wearing something slightly crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n The audience interaction is central to Every Brilliant Thing<\/a>, a play created by Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe about a man processing the experience of his mother\u2019s attempted suicide and his own depression. Donahoe first led in Every Brilliant Thing when the play originated at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014 and came with it to New York later that\u00a0year (it\u2019s since been revived on the West End with a series of British stars, including Sue Perkins and Minnie Driver). Now, 36-year-old Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, will bring it to Broadway. It\u2019s an exciting prospect, he tells me, in large part because the play\u2019s dependence on audience volunteers gives him a way to shed his sense of being a big name and meet a lot of new people. People keep asking him if he\u2019s nervous. He thinks it\u2019ll be fun, especially in the period before the show begins when he mingles with the crowd and tries to set it at ease. \u201cI think that I\u2019m quite good at dispelling the idea that I\u2019m a celebrity in my actual interactions,\u201d he tells me. \u201cSo I\u2019m hoping I\u2019ll still be able to achieve that in a setting where we are in a theater and they have come to see me in a play.\u201d<\/p>\n Lest you worry about being targeted at random, you should know that Every Brilliant Thing operates with an opt-in system. No one will be brought onstage without being asked if they\u2019re okay with it beforehand. And Radcliffe and his team are working hard to make sure the experience is as painless and fun as possible for each volunteer while accounting for whatever unpredictable responses may play out. In one scene, he notes a beat where he could indicate an older couple in the audience holding hands by muttering an aside: \u201cUnless they look like a couple who hates each other.\u201d In another, he considers how to cue someone who\u2019s been selected to play a father giving a wedding toast. If they\u2019re fumbling for ideas, maybe tell them to \u201csay what\u2019s in your heart, Dad.\u201d If they\u2019re already confident, just let them riff.<\/p>\n Photo: Balazs Gardi for New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n Since so much of Every Brilliant Thing depends on the unpredictability of people\u2019s responses, the production has spent much of its rehearsal time bringing in guinea-pig audiences of friends of Radcliffe\u2014like a dresser he\u2019s worked with since Equus \u2014 and the play\u2019s staff to test things out. They\u2019ve got a sign-up sheet going, he tells me, and since he knows those people are baseline vetted, he\u2019s testing his limits by approaching those who look a little less comfortable and figuring out how to finesse them into playing along well. You get the sense that Radcliffe is enjoying the sort of high-intensity interval training that the dynamic requires of his stage-acting skills, which he\u2019s been flexing hard recently. He spent a year in Merrily We Roll Along, for which he won a Tony for Best Supporting Actor in 2024, and had initially wanted to take a longer break from theater. But in talking with older actors who\u2019d had kids, he learned how hard it would be to perform almost every night and spend time with his son (who\u2019s now almost 3) once he was in school full time. \u201cAs I was having those conversations, I read this play for the first time, and I was just like, I want to do this,\u201d Radcliffe says. \u201cIf you ever find something that gives you the chance to do something that you\u2019ve never done before and will probably never be asked to do again, then that\u2019s something you should try and do.\u201d<\/p>\n Checking in with his son, Radcliffe says, has been a good way to find ballast while working on a script that, though it involves plenty of humor, deals with heavy subjects. In keeping with the play\u2019s title, his character compiles a list of \u201cbrilliant\u201d things that make life worth living, written on notes that his character brings out during the performance. In rehearsal, regular calls for new brilliant things are solicited from the crew (I wrote \u201csteel-cut oatmeal\u201d). The process has made Radcliffe mindful of the small things. \u201cI was at the Super Bowl the other day, and there is a specific joy in watching people notice themselves on the jumbotron,\u201d Radcliffe says, which would have made for a great brilliant thing were it not that audience members might think of the couple at the Coldplay concert instead. He\u2019s found an even better brilliant thing recently, however, suggested by a stage manager. He won\u2019t reveal it to me, though, because it\u2019s now solidly part of a speech his character recites at the end of the play.<\/p>\n Every Brilliant Thing<\/a> is in previews February 21 at the Hudson Theatre.<\/p>\n Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. Want more stories like this one? Subscribe now<\/a>![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1fc0d8e8bcf3bb83aa7e8bfe60e0543c69-Daniel-Radcliffe-Balazs-Gardi-1.rhorizontal.w900.jpg\")
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\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the February 23, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n
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\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the February 23, 2026, issue of
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