May 5, 2026, was a very good Tuesday for Daniel Radcliffe.
While dropping his son off at nursery school that morning, he received a text from his mom that the actor describes to Gold Derby as being “just the word ‘yes’ with a bunch of exclamation marks.” The reason for that enthused note? Radcliffe had just been nominated for a Tony Award for his star turn in the one person show, Every Brilliant Thing. Then only a few hours later he got the news that his NBC sitcom, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins had been renewed for a second season.
“Every Brilliant Thing and The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins perfectly demonstrate the spectrum that I’m operating on at the moment,” Radcliffe says several weeks after that magical Tuesday. “Basically, everything needs to be either really meaningful and profound with a message I deeply believe in spreading — or incredibly fun, silly, and joy-inducing.”
Certainly, the two projects couldn’t be more different. Every Brilliant Thing — which was also Tony-nominated for Best Play Revival — is an experimental production that grapples with mental health and suicide while Radcliffe sprints through the theater, plucking audience members to act opposite him. The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, on the other hand, is a zany half-hour mockumentary about a retired football player (Tracy Morgan) hoping to reignite his career by hiring Radcliffe’s disgraced documentarian Arthur Tobin to film his every move.
Both choices have worked out brilliantly for the 36-year-old actor, best known for playing Harry Potter in the original film series. Reggie Dinkins earned a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score and was NBC’s most-watched comedy debut in three years, while Every Brilliant Thing became such a Broadway phenomenon that tickets sold for upwards of $900 and launched a rush line arms race with people waiting overnight outside the theater to secure discount tickets. (Radcliffe wrapped his run on May 24; Mariska Hargitay will headline the production from May 26-July 5, followed by Tracee Ellis Ross from July 7-Aug. 9.)
For Radcliffe, the response to Reggie Dinkins is a bit of a relief. “Honestly, if this show had come out and people hadn’t liked it, I would have had to fully reevaluate my relationship with comedy,” he says, “Because I was like, ‘This is the funniest s–t I’ve ever read,’ and you can only be this silly and ridiculous if you’re as unbelievably smart as our writer’s room.” And Reggie Dinkins is also bringing the actor awards attention. He was recently nominated for a Gotham TV Award for Best Supporting Performance in a Comedy Series and is contending for an equivalent Emmy nod.
Conversely, the popularity of Every Brilliant Thing and his Tony nomination took the actor by surprise, especially when he compares this year’s nod his experience being nominated for — and winning — Best Featured Actor in a Musical two years ago for the acclaimed revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along opposite Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez.
“With Merrily, from before we even started, there was such an incredible groundswell of momentum and excitement,” he says. “I felt like, ‘Oh god, if we don’t get nominated, then people will take that to mean something, and I will feel that I’ve let people down.’ This time, I really had zero expectations that would happen, and so the fact that it has is this amazing, delightful thing.
“I’m probably not supposed to say this, but I know I’m not gonna win, and I don’t care,” he adds jovially. “I’m just genuinely really enjoying being nominated and feeling a part of the community. Last time going into the Tonys, I was so nervous. This time, I’m just really excited.”
Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez in Merrily We Roll AlongMatthew Murphy/©Sony Pictures Classics/Courtesy Everett CollectionEvery Brilliant Thing was Radcliffe’s sixth show on Broadway since Equus in 2008, which does make him a legitimate part of New York’s theater community and an excellent choice for the elaborate tightrope act that is Every Brilliant Thing. Prior to each performance, Radcliffe would spend 10-15 minutes running through the theater and up to the balcony to pass out cards that are used in the show. At the same time, he was also casting five audience members in important roles. Those selected were later called upon to improvise with him through key scenes in the show.
Helming Every Brilliant Thing alone every night is no easy feat. After signing onto the project, Radcliffe started preparing by learning the written lines he knew he’d be delivering at each show. “The monologue itself needs to be deeply ingrained,” he says, “Because that is not the thing to worry about night after night. The curve balls are coming from the audience.”
With the monologue learned, he then rehearsed blocking with the show’s co-directors, Jeremy Herrin and Duncan Macmillan, before bringing in small practice audiences. “We had a sign-up sheet that we would give to trusted friends,” he recalls. They started with 15 people in a rehearsal space before scaling up to the Hudson Theatre, which seats nearly 1,000 people.
Over time, he developed a secret method for selecting the five audience members that he’d act opposite in the show. For the veterinarian role, he singled out “somebody who looks a bit nervous and giggly,” because if they’re smiley on stage, it unlocks a joke in the script about how they should look more serious when putting down someone’s dog. For the lecturer, he’d look for someone in a unique outfit that he can describe when he introduces them later in the show.
He also had specific criteria for the other three roles, those of his father, school counselor, and love interest. “First and foremost you’re looking for someone that’s not going to try and take over the whole thing — you’re just looking for sweet, nice people,” he explains, adding that he gravitated towards choosing more overtly shy or reserved people, “There’s something inherently really moving about watching somebody go out of their comfort zone. My tactic is to ask them in front of their kids and then leave. The kids will put pressure on them, so by the time I’ve come back around, they’ll be like, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’”
The improvised audience interactions yielded some delightful surprises across Radcliffe’s 22 previews and 84 performances. “There’s a moment where I ask somebody to take their shoe and sock off,” he remembers, “We had a great moment the other day when this woman did a reveal that her sock went entirely up to her knee.”
In another scene, he would get a book from an audience member and ask his love interest to describe the plot. “It only happened two or three times across the run,” he says, “But sometimes they know the book, so when I ask them what it’s about, they can talk about it. It feels like a magic trick — and in fact, I’m sure it feels to the audience that something has been planted. But it really hasn’t.”
But Every Brilliant Thing’s audience participation is more than an entertaining gimmick. It also allows theatergoers a chance to interact with the subject matter in a personal way that most shows don’t. “I’m gonna cry talking about it,” Radcliffe says while recounting one particularly moving interaction with an audience member.
“The woman who played my school counselor had to give me advice on getting through a tough time, and this woman had been spectacular throughout the whole show,” he recalls. “I was so sure she was a therapist or teacher, but she wasn’t. She was an architect! We got to the end of the show, and I was about to end the scene with her, and she said, ‘Can I say one more thing?’ She said to me, ‘The pain and sadness that you are feeling now is awful, but it means you’re alive — and it is always better to feel that than to feel nothing at all.’
“The whole theater was just melting,” Radcliffe continues. “You could feel everybody backstage had stopped what they were doing and were just listening to the scene. I found out after the show that she was there with her daughter and her daughter was going through something. While she was on stage, the character she was playing was comforting my character, but secretly, she was talking to the daughter who was sitting next to her. That doesn’t happen at most plays, and that’s why I’m gonna really f–king miss it.”
Thanks to the upcoming return of Reggie Dinkins, though, Radcliffe also has something to look forward to. While he doesn’t have many details about Season 2 yet, he’s excited to reconnect with the show’s cast and crew in the coming months. In addition to Morgan and Radcliffe, Reggie Dinkins also stars Saturday Night Live veterans Bobby Moynihan and Heidi Gardner in a recurring role.
“When I was growing up, my favorite thing to do was listen to stunt men tell stories,” he says. “That has transferred since living in New York to listening to ex-SNL people talk about their time there. It is my absolute favorite thing. There are people like Tracy, who just absolutely loved it… and then I’ve known multiple people who have been fired. The amazing thing about people coming out of SNL is that even if they’ve had a bad experience, it was formative. If you can survive SNL, nothing else is ever going to phase you.”
Radcliffe, of course, hosted SNL in 2012 and he got the chance to share the screen with another former host, Megan Thee Stallion, during the first season of Reggie Dinkins. “We all just felt so grateful that she wanted to do the show,” he says. “She’s such an impossibly famous mega pop star. I feel like most people of her status wait for a show to get successful before they dive in, but she wanted to dive in with us on the first season. She came to set prepared and ready to work, play around, and have fun.”
Radcliffe hasn’t heard from showrunners Robert Carlock and Sam Means if Megan’s character will return at all for Season 2. The only note he’s got so far involves his facial hair.
“I’m doing a film over the summer which will require me to shave,” Radcliffe says. “I think Robert and Sam’s main concern is, ‘How long do you have to grow the beard back?’ I am assuring them that the three weeks I have will be enough to have something, even if it’s not a full beard.”
—Additional reporting by Laura Clark
