Daniel Radcliffe on the World of “Miracle Workers”
In less than two weeks, Miracle Workers will be gracing the small screen, and we can’t wait to see Daniel Radcliffe in action in the heavenly seven-part series on TBS!
In a recent interview with Collider, Daniel talked more about creating the world of Miracle Workers and his character, Craig, a lowly angel whose job is to answer humanity’s prayers. As big as this job sounds, Craig has developed his own way of dealing with the people of Earth’s demands:
Because nobody else is really in his department, and he’s developed a certain way of doing things, he’s also very cautious. He’s somebody who, for fear of failing, will not try. He would rather take the path of, ‘Well, I won’t even try that, because that’s gonna go terribly, badly wrong. So I’ll just stick to my safe prayers that I know that I can get done.’
While Miracle Workers certainly isn’t Daniel’s first foray into the world of television, he revealed that there is one element of working on projects for the small screen that he has trouble adjusting to.
I think one of the intimidating things for me about doing TV is that you are often signing on to something having just read a pilot. And that’s crazy to me. And not knowing where that goes is something that would worry me.
But there’s something about Simon [Rich, the show’s creator] that I have absolutely no doubt that he would be able to come up with amazing ideas for how [and] where to go with this show. Obviously [the] next series will not be in Heaven, it will be in somewhere totally different.
It’s not only Daniel’s faith in Miracle Workers creator Simon Rich that stemmed his concern but also his role as a producer of the series. His involvement in the project from an early stage has also given him a rather different perspective of the audition process.
I got to be involved in the casting process as well, which was super weird, to be on the other side of that. It was cool, and it made me have so much respect for actors in a way that I maybe didn’t before, frankly. […] And so you were seeing the same scene again and again and again. And then suddenly you’ll see somebody and like, ‘Oh, wow, you just said the exact same thing as everyone one else, and suddenly that was completely different and amazing.’
Speaking of behind the scenes, when viewers get to see Craig answering prayers in the first episode, they should pay special attention to the set of the Department of Answered Prayers:
All the prayers that are on the wall are all very specific, real prayers with pictures of crew members. […] When you step [onto] the sets and see that level of detail, I always think that’s a really cool, exciting thing.
The level of detail on set is something that often contributes to great world-building and is something that Miracle Workers arguably shares with the Potter movies, a point that Daniel has acknowledged:
I’m not saying this is like Harry Potter, but I think it’s the reason that Harry Potter was very successful as well, was that world, and you wanted to spend time in there. So no matter what iteration of it it is, you sort of just want to go back and see more of it. I think this has that same feeling.
As well as it being a great story, with great characters, there’s an intricacy and a playfulness to the world, where you just want to spend time in it, and see how more of it works. And to me, that’s a very exciting thing, as an audience member, where you just want to get back to being in that space with all these characters.
We can’t wait to see Daniel in action! Read the full interview here and check out the trailer below. And don’t forget to catch Miracle Workers on TBS on February 12.
https://youtu.be/pBVqgz0a4Kc
