Just as the “Harry Potter” book and film series centers on “he-who-must-not-be-named,” there’s apparently something else that must not be named between Daniel Radcliffe and Darren Criss: their shared history playing the young boy wizard who lived.
It’s hard to believe that in all the years of running in similar professional circles, Radcliffe and Criss have never mentioned “A Very Potter Musical,” the viral web parody musical co-created by Criss that helped shoot him to fame in 2009 before landing “Glee” a year later.
But the Emmy and Tony Award winner revealed in a new interview with Jesse Tyler Ferguson on the “Dinner’s On Me” podcast that even when replacing Radcliffe in Broadway’s “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” in 2012, playing Harry Potter was “sort of an unspoken thing.”
“I think he was aware of it,” Criss said of his first encounters with Radcliffe before “How to Succeed.” “Poor guy, God knows what he thinks of me — not like that’s something I lose sleep over. But I’m sure by the time we met, I think he was aware of it for sure.”
“You never talked about it?” Ferguson pressed.
“I mean, I think it was sort of an unspoken thing. By the time we had met, and our interactions have been very brief, but by the time we had met it was when I was taking over for the role, and that was a really fun passing of the baton,” Criss said. “And so I think our conversations were mainly about that.”
“He’s a real theater guy, so I think the fact that we shared that is really nice,” he continued. “And he’s down the street from me now, which is really special. We’re literally on the same block, it’s incredible.”
Criss is currently starring on Broadway reprising his Tony-winning role in “Maybe Happy Ending,” while Radcliffe is starring in the solo show “Every Brilliant Thing.”
Watch Criss’ full “Dinner’s on Me” interview below:
