Tuesday, February 12, 2019

When you're rich, you can afford to be the "weird" actor

The Daily Beast has an interview with Daniel Radcliffe titled "Daniel Radcliffe Somehow Became Hollywood’s Weirdest Actor—and Its Most Normal Celebrity" and my immediate thought was "Of course the dude can be "weird"; he made so much money from the Harry Potter movies that he doesn't need to mainstream appeal or oeuvre." and it's true. At this point, Radcliffe could star in an anal gangbang movie and it wouldn't matter to his career because he doesn't need the cash.

What I did find surprising is that he's starring in a show on TBS. It's not that he's doing TV that's surprising (though the fact that it's American television and not British telly is), it's that he's doing one on TBS which isn't exactly a big network compared to like NBC, CBS, and the others. I think in terms of that, they're probably below AMC, but equal to TNT and maybe the History Channel. Basically, they're not small or insignificant, but TBS doesn't immediately pop to mind the same way that AMC and FX or CW would. But again, Daniel Radcliffe is rich as hell and if he wants to do a TV show on a middle sized network, then he certainly can.

The article itself is a pretty good read but the title isn't terribly accurate. The only role Radcliffe has played that can be considered "weird" is in the movie Swiss Army Man where he plays a corpse. A flatulent corpse. Otherwise, the other roles listed in the article are pretty normal for an actor who wants to do non-standard, "safe" movies (e.g. big budget blockbusters) and I applaud him for it.

The new TV show he's starring in, Miracle Workers, sounds interesting and I might check it out when it premieres tonight. From the description, the show is similar to The Good Place, but a little more bleak. Radcliffe plays a low level angel working in the department that handles answering prayers in a version of Heaven that's run more like a corporation. Then God, immature and incompetent and played by Steve Buscemi, decides that he wants to destroy the Earth because he's bored with it and wants to move on to something else. To prevent this, Craig (Radcliffe) and another character named Eliza (played by Geraldine Viswanathan) have to help two people fall in love. My interest in piqued.

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