Actor Daniel Radcliffe has been trying to cast off the Harry Potter mould with some unconventional niche choices of films. Playing a villain in Now You See Me 2, he chose to play a farting corpse in Swiss Army Man. Why then did he do itIJ
How did they get you to do this movieIJ
Everyone thinks that I needed to be convinced, I really didn’t. It was an amazing script though it may have looked weird. I basically play a magical dead body, who about 3-4 minutes after the film starts, comes back to life and is discovered by Paul Dano’s character, a hopeless lost soul wandering on the beach. He finds my character and they go on a magical journey together. It was quite an adventure.
Were you drawn to it not just because of the originality of the film but also because you play a corpseIJ
I would never get a chance to play a dead guy who comes back to life and talks, yet is not a zombie. I was also attracted to the sort of physical nature of the role, like how much he gets chucked around. The moment when I got to the second page, where I was being used as a jet ski, I was like yeah, I will probably be doing this film.
It sounds weird but it is actually a very beautiful story between two human beings or rather one human being who is alive and one who is dead. It teaches you a lot about what’s important in life and what you take away from it.
It’s really a movie about joy, like there are these two slightly odd characters but he’s reminding this dead body about how life is worth living and together they are exploring all the things that give us joy and make us happy.
It’s a brilliant performance by yourself and Paul Dano. To give him credit, he had to literally put you on his shoulder the entire time.
He said he has never been stronger than after he finished this film. I mean, I am not particularly heavy, but I know the weight of a human being which he was lugging around. There was actually a line he improvised through the film which makes me laugh. I am not supposed to be saying it but there’s a scene where I moved my head down to avoid the camera see me laugh, as he was saying “I am feeling buffed just carrying you around.” That wasn’t even part of the script, it took me by surprise.
See that’s the thing with corpsing. There are a lot of things which you find amusing but you have to continue to be dead and not even blink.
I couldn’t blink. In fact, I got very good at not blinking. There was a sort of fear as Paul was giving an amazing performance opposite me and I thought that if I moved a bit, I would ruin the scene.
It is one of the most original comedies certainly of recent times. Did you have any idea how funny audiences would find it when you were making itIJ
It was very original but it was also very funny. I was laughing at some of the ideas, the images. There was a part of me which was laughing at how do you do that, how do you intend to make any of this happen, but they did. The only thing which was not there in the script was that epic feel in some of the moments.
The directors of the movie talk about using music to sneak some of their weirder ideas past the audience. That is why the soundtrack is kind of key to that. There are some instances in the movie where if there was no soundtrack, you would wonder what am I watching, but somehow with the music it makes it great.
Swiss Army Man to premiere on Star Movies Select HD on August12 at 9:00pm.