Daniel Radcliffe on starring in afterlife comedy <em>Miracle Workers</em> and answering fans' prayers

So it doesn’t matter where you sorted up, it’s all ending up in the same chaotic mess, anyway.One of the things that I find really fun about the script — and I think that people will find would actually be very disconcerting if it was a reflection of a true afterlife — is how lightly they take everything. Even though you think you’ve got him figured out, he seems to not be very focused and seems pretty carefree, there’s another part of you that’s thinking, “Well, is this all actually a kind of cover and he actually knows exactly what’s going on?” But then most of the time, it transpires that he really doesn’t know what’s going on. This is a really sad answer, I’m sorry, but I think the last time I sort of very sincerely believed in God and also had cause to pray was probably when I was about 11 or 12, and one of my dogs had died, so I think I was praying that she would be okay. I don’t think anything really bad had happened between them, but about 12 years ago, one of this girl’s friends had been backstage at Good Morning America, and I was on doing it that morning, and backstage she caught up with me and was like, “Hey, my friend’s a huge fan, would you speak to her on the phone?” And I said, “Yeah, absolutely.” And she called her friend whose phone was not working, so she called that friend’s sister instead, and that friend’s sister just went, “Oh, this is too early for this, call her, I’m not around,” not realizing that her sister’s phone was broken, and there was no other way of this girl contacting me. So this girl then came to the stage door the other day [at The Lifespan of a Fact], gave me an illustrated pop-up book called — hold on, I’ve got it here — “The Real Life Story of the Time Daniel Radcliffe Tried to Call Me and I Missed It.” And it’s just like this genuinely very charming, funny thing, and she did say at the end of it, “I can now fully forgive my sister for hanging up on you that day, now that I have spoken to you.” So that’s the closest thing I’ve done to doing a good thing for a Harry Potter fan recently. I’m just like, “Wait, there must be a way to say it.” And he’s like, “No, either is basically fine.” I was like, “Oh, okay, cool.” One of those arguments in the world is how you pronounce that surname — and everybody’s right. Because we train one thing so hard, it maybe stands out a bit more when you see me playing a corpse [in Swiss Army Man], but that’s how I have the most fun doing my job, is by doing things that I’m like, “Wow, I’ve never done this before.” Swiss Army Man was simultaneously one of the most terrifying experiences in my life, because before we started, I was like, “I don’t know how to play a corpse coming magically back to life.” But discovering that on set with those people was so much fun. So I don’t really know what Hollywood says or thinks about me.You’ve done broad musical comedy with How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and weirder comedy with Swiss Army Man. Miracle Workers, though, is your most significant comedy role to date. And I do think that may be a freedom that comes with having been in some really big films when I was younger, it’s the sort of potential of “I’ve done that, and it’s amazing, if I get to do it again one day, great, but I also know that it’s not the be-all and end-all of working in this industry.” It’s possible to create great work and have a lot of fun doing it in whatever medium that is.