The age-old dilemma: can guys and girls really just be friends, no sexual tension involved. That is just one question Daniel Radcliffe, star of new rom-com WHAT IF, tackled at this week’s press conference. Read on for more details.
Question: Were you actively looking for a rom-com. You seem to be someone shifting from genre to genre – were you looking for something to tick off?
Daniel Radcliffe: Yeah, it’s interesting. I was having this conversation with a friend of mine the other day…as actors, the only time we talk about genre is when we’re promoting a film or when we’re talking to journalists, because I don’t think it’s something that factors into my thought process when I’m picking a film. You’re not thinking “Oh, I want to do a romantic comedy, only show me romantic comedies from now on”. You don’t say that to your agents because you go…you’re just looking for a good film, you’re looking for good scripts, and when this film came along I’d read a few romantic comedies around that time – some of them were actually really, really good – but this one just sort of stood out to me and, at the time, had the realist chance of going, so I really wanted to be a part of it.
Question: What was it about this movie in particular?
DR: Just the fact that it was very, very smart. The dialogue seemed… you know, it was both funny but was also the kind of…it didn’t feel like contrived-funny, it felt like how people actually speak, which is great. I found it very kind of moving at the end of the film, without trying too hard. It’s just a very simple, sweet story that is, I think, quite emotionally affecting…Films like this can often be kind of disposable and can be very entertaining to watch for a bit and then you sort of forget about them almost immediately. I hope that this is the kind of film that will stick with people for longer than the 90 minutes.
Question: Did you originally learn the part as an American [the film is set in Toronto]?
DR: I absolutely initially learnt the part American but then, to be honest, what happened was that…yeah, or Canadian, or North American…what happened when I got out there was, two days before we starting filming I was in Canada, the production company said “You have to do it English” and I was like “Why? I learnt it American!” I think it was like “You’re not marketable in the American market not in your own accent”, basically not in an accent that people don’t recognise you as. Which is bad news for HORNS and all the other stuff I’ve done in American accents…But, you know, it was kind of one of those ridiculous last minute panics on their behalf and I certainly wasn’t going to suddenly go “Well, screw you guys, I’m going to put 200 people out of work for the sake of an accent”, I wasn’t obviously going to do that. That’s why I’m English in the film, it wasn’t through a choice. It ended up being really good, it ended up being fine for the character…there isn’t anything about the character in the script that is inherently American or Canadian, and so it didn’t change the story at all. It was a little annoying – I like doing American accents, they’re fun. We used a lot of improvisation during the film, so I think a lot of my own personality and stuff does come out through the character, and obviously I talk quite fast so Wallace talks quite fast.
Question: Post-HARRY POTTER you’ve been picking really, really good scripts. They’re all different roles, but the thing they have in common is that they’re very good scripts. How do you go about choosing a script?
DR: There isn’t any process to choosing a script beyond reading it and really enjoying it or not enjoying it for me. I think I’m very lucky in the sense that I’ve got good instinct and both my parents were sort of…everything they worked on when they could choose, or had some say in…my mum was a casting director…and my dad’s whole job as a literary agent was to find new writers and playwrights. I’d like to think that I’ve inherited some of their kind of tastes and instincts for scripts. I just like things that have good dialogue, fully-realised characters, and if it’s kind of original and has some sort of fresh take on something then that’s great too.
Question: Have you ever had real stinkers come across your desk?
DR: Oh God yes, absolutely. I’m yet to read…I mean, there’s been a couple of kind of good action films, but the action film…people think that the romantic comedy genre, because it’s been interesting the last couple of months or so talking about the rom-com, it’s interesting to me. People think of it as a genre that’s had a bad time recently, and I get that, but I don’t think it’s as bad as the action movie. No-one cares about…there is never a character involved in any of those films, it’s just the same people thrown in different cities with different cars. I like action movies, I feel like there used to be lots of really witty ones like DIE HARD, LETHAL WEAPON, those kinds of films. But even like the BOURNE IDENTITY, the great action films of our time…they’re few and far between.
Question: What do you think gives Wallace and Chantry a credible relationship?
DR: It’s very hard to show or explain why it is that two people connect in the way they do, why the fall in love the way they do. In this movie that’s what it’s about; watching them and finding out why they love each other. They’ve very similar sense of humours…but that’s also what I love about it – in a normal movie it would be much less of a dilemma…in your normal rom-com there’s me, the girl I fancy and then the girl-I-fancy’s boyfriend, who is a tool normally. He’s horrible and you’re going “Why is she with him? It makes no sense” and it’s kind of inevitable that she’ll end up with the nice guy rather than the horrible guy. It makes it a much more real situation – she’s got a great relationship, she just happens to be falling in love with somebody else. That just seems a lot more ‘realer’.
Question: We’ve just has the anniversary of WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, and it is the whole ‘can a guy and a girl ever actually be friends?’ We do feel a bit bad for the boyfriend [Ben, played by Rafe Spall] by the end of the film – did you feel guilty?
DR: Well, that’s the thing…the question that everyone else has asked about this film, and that everyone else has thought that this film is asking, is the same as WHEN HARRY MET SALLY – can men and women really be friends? The truth of the film is ‘is it ever sensible or sane to live in denial of your own feelings?’ Because there is no point in Wallace’s mind when he does not want to see Chantry with her clothes off. He’s in love with her, there’s no semblance of trying to be friends, he’s just put in this situation where he kind of has to pretend to want to be friends. So, I don’t think there’s almost a mixed message there, that’s just the complexities of people saying one thing when sometimes they mean another, which is unfortunately the case. But not unfortunately – again, there isn’t anything malicious in it, he just knows he can’t have anything more at that point. But he’s found someone who makes him really happy, so he doesn’t want to give that up, but in order to not give that up there is an act of deceit.
Complex stuff!
WHAT IF arrives in cinemas from 20th August.
