Despite all the gossip-page chatter, Daniel Radcliffe has
found reaction to his much-discussed disrobing in a
stage production of Equus (below) to be
almost entirely encouraging. “No one actually [has] come up to me and talked to
me on the street about it. Everyone I’ve talked to has been really, really
positive about it,” says Radcliffe at the recent press day for December Boys.
“There’s a paper in
— which shall remain nameless, but isn’t exactly a bastion of truth — and they
printed a story which was written about ‘an angry mother, unnamed.’ And I was just
thinking, ‘Yeah, I’m not sure that this angry mother exists. I think this paper
has invented this angry mother to try to perpetrate a bit of a backlash toward the show.’”
was getting pretty nervous, wondering if the critics were going to
go to this just because I’m in it, or what’s going to happen,” he says. “And
actually they didn’t, which I was really happy about. The thing that I just had
to keep reminding myself was that this was being designed by John Napier, who
designed the original. I’m being directed by Thea Sharrock, who probably will
end up being one of the most important directors in British theater. I’m with
Richard Griffiths, who has more experience than most other stage actors… it’s
lit by David Hersey. If I’m going to screw up, I couldn’t screw up with better
people around me, which is quite a comforting thought.”
Far from screwing up, the show’s commercial and critical embrace has spawned talk of a tour across the pond. Radcliffe, for his part, is game.
I might be doing Equus on Broadway,
which would be very exciting,” he says.
happen, which is great news, and terribly exciting.”