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Daniel Radcliffe: Why Working With Michael Caine Was A Dream Come True, And Why He Won’t See ‘Harry Potter And The Cursed Child’

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 05:41 PST, Jun 14, 2016

Daniel Radcliffe famously appeared in the Harry Potter series of movies, where he gained international stardom playing the title character, and now he is back to doing magic. Radcliffe landed a role in Now You See Me 2, which hit theaters on June 10, 2016. According to USA Today, Daniel Radcliffe plays the role of a bratty billionaire who tricks a group of master illusionists into pulling off a big heist.

In reality, though, Daniel Radcliffe admits that he is not the most impressive when it comes to tricks involving sleight of hand. Daniel Radcliffe spoke about his playful incident when he failed to do a magic trick on set.

“The one thing I can kind of do is the bit I screw up in the first scene. I can actually do that, but then the one time I missed, I was like, ‘Ah, that’s definitely going to be the [take] they use.’ Failure is always funnier than success, particularly when it comes to this character.”

The film is a sequel to the surprise hit of 2013, which reunites Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, and Dave Franco as an elite group of magicians, called the Horsemen, who recruit a new member played by Lizzy Caplan. Daniel Radcliffe joins the cast to play Walter Mabry, a magic enthusiast and maniacal tech mogul.

The Horsemen get kidnapped by Mabry, and he forces them to steal a powerful computer chip for him. Little does Radcliffe’s character know, the Horsemen have a trick up their sleeves. They plot one final elaborate stunt to clear their names and expose Mabry’s corruption.

When he had to research about how to approach his role, Radcliffe says that he found inspiration in his childhood classmates.

Daniel Radcliffe spoke about how he looked to his childhood and found inspiration for the characterization of Walter Mabry.

“Our private schools produce a lot of perfectly nice, very good people, but they do occasionally produce people whose sense of entitlement and arrogance is breathtaking. I saw him as a product of that environment.”

The role he had landed not only gave him a chance to portray a villain for the first time, it also gave the world the chance to see the name Daniel Radcliffe billed among the likes of industry elites like Mark Ruffalo, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine. The Harry Potter actor expressed that he especially enjoyed working with Caine, who played Radcliffe’s father in the film, and he admitted that working with him was a personal goal for him.

Filming in and around casinos in Macau started a new pastime for Daniel: gambling. More specifically, the game of baccarat.

“I tried playing blackjack for like half an hour, but I was like, ‘Wow, I’m losing loads of money really quickly and this isn’t fun.’ Baccarat is something you can take a lot longer losing money, so at least you get some time enjoyment out of it.”

In other news, Daniel Radcliffe has expressed some reservations about watching his old film series being adapted into a stage play. According to India Today, Daniel Radcliffe might not watch the stage production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The main reason for Radcliffe’s decision is not for himself, but for the fans at the show.

Daniel Radcliffe spoke about his decision to not watch Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

“It would be a weird one. I could be completely wrong in this, but I feel like if I went to see it that night, there is going to be a lot of Harry Potter fans there in the audience… Would it be more about them watching me watch the show?… I would never want to do anything that would distract or take away from the show.”

[Photo by Andrew Toth/Getty Images]

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