Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor who shot to fame as Harry Potter, later pursued diverse stage and screen roles.
On the island
Eight records
Bring Me SunshineFavourite
I just think this is one of the most joyous songs ever recorded. I don't know if you need to know Morecambe and Wise to appreciate them, but this is a show in the UK, so presumably everyone here will have some sort of knowledge with Morcombe and Wise, and if you don't, I envy you because you just have a huge treat in store. They were a part of what I love about comedy. I think looking back, like a huge amount of my sense of humour is derived from them. They still make me laugh. I can just watch them and it's a very, very happy place for me to be in mentally. And Bring Me Sunshine is the most iconic song. They sang many other songs actually as well, which are all great, but they did this at the end of every show and it was wonderful.
We Will All Go Together When We Go
He is an absolute genius. And to have written songs that long ago that are still funny and still feel kind of edgy and subversive now is truly stunning. And this song is called We Will All Go Together When We Go. There's a sort of cheerful nihilism, which again, I think, very well represents me.
Pixies is one of my favourite bands, and I was able to see them live at Reading a while ago, which is good because I barely go to live music ever anymore. This is not necessarily my favourite song. There are songs like Something Against You and Broken Face from Surfer Rosa are songs I really adore as well, but I wouldn't want to listen to them on a desert island, and this one I would, so that's why I picked it.
He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot
This is a song that I think when I first listened to it, it just borrowed into my brain, and it's long and beautiful, and it can kind of match your mood depending on what you're like. If you're really happy, it feels relaxing. If you're sad, it kind of allows you to wallow in that if you want to do that.
The Hold Steady were the first band that I ever heard sort of talking about the aftermath of drinking and not just in this song but in various other songs they have characters that sort of talk about the cost of it as well as talking about doing it a lot. But yeah, this song is called Killer Parties and it just hit me at the right moment.
It has the effect on me that almost nothing can have which is it is it makes me wish I was religious because there's a lot of religious imagery and things in it and I love this song but I can only imagine how much more I would connect to it if those things meant something to me too. It's just a stunningly beautiful song.
She's this artist that I think gets weirder and more wonderful and more imaginative every time she comes back. And this is a really beautiful song called Emily.
Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile
It's the only piece of instrumental music that I've got on the list and I think I could listen to it anywhere and it would make me both nostalgic for the past and excited for the future and full of life. Even on a desert island, I think it would have that effect.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:56So that idea of earning the luck that you've been given is important to you. Why?
Yeah, um because I have been insanely lucky and I think probably out of a vague sense of guilt about having something so amazing happen to you so young and I think I will always have a part of my brain that is going when I first walk into a rehearsal room. It's particularly a neurosis of mine in theatre. Not so much now, but I remember when I was first doing Equus, or was certainly when I was doing the musical, I went in and was sort of thinking, oh my god, everyone here just thinks you're here because of Harry Potter. And in large part, they are right. So you have to make sure that you're bringing something else to the table. And I think a little part of that will always be there in some respect. But if that's the thing that makes me work hard, then fine.
Presenter asks
3:08What are you looking for in a script?
I do think it's important to say I don't think of them as weird. Weird is sort of something I've been told so many times that my choices are weird that I'm like, I just, I guess I have to just. … I'm excited by working, particularly with young filmmakers who are getting their first film made or very sort of young and hungry and ambitious. And I'm attracted to original material. I know that sounds like a really obvious thing to say, but it's very hard to find a script that you read and go, like, oh, I've not read anything else like this. Even of what I've done, there's only sort of, I suppose, Swiss Army Man, Horns, and Guns Akimbo. Those are the three that's like, they are just. The minute I read them, I was like, there is a vision behind this. A whole world is in this director's head. You know, I love that. And also, whenever a film, like Swiss Army Man does a wonderful thing.
The keepsakes
The book
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
Various
So I've chosen the Norton Anthology of Poetry because I got given it by someone when I was in my late teens and it really inspired my love of lots of different poets and poetry generally. And rather than taking one book, you get one book that has a lot of different stories in it because many of the poems are stories. And I could spend time trying to understand some of the modern free verse nonsense.
The luxury
I'm gonna stick very, very simple here. Pencil and paper. Just enough that I can pass the time writing and presumably doing some version of all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy as I go slowly insane on the island. But, you know, it's something to do.
Presenter asks
5:02How do you feel looking back at that ten years on?
It's amazing. It really is. I sound very corny and earnest when I talk about it, but it does inspire those genuine feelings in me. I don't know what I thought would happen at the end of Possa. I guess in some way I expected it to die down, which it has not. If anything, it sort of feels as big, or if not bigger, just because we're now at the stage when you know I am 30. If you were my age when you watched the films, you might have young children by now of yourself. They are being introduced to it. So it's like you just are watching that cycle kind of perpetuate in an amazing way. And, you know, I have things from when I was a kid that I really cared about and loved and still mean a lot to me. And if I met those people, I would be a bit sort of shell-shocked. So to think that I occupy that place for other people is genuinely really lovely.
Presenter asks
27:10How did you deal with that [scrutiny]?
I think badly at first. I didn't really know in terms of behavior and behavior in public. … that was one of the first times that I felt being famous brushing up against my life. If I went out and if I got drunk, I'd suddenly be aware of there being an interest in that because it's not just like a drunk guy, it's oh, Harry Potter's getting drunk in the bar. And that carries its own kind of interest for people and also a slightly mocking interest because it is inherently funny for people. And, you know, I suppose those were the moments when I first started being like, oh, that doesn't feel good. I don't like how I'm being looked at in this particular context. And then the way of dealing with that is just to drink more or get more drunk. So I did a lot of that for sort of a few years. … I definitely think a lot of the drinking that happened towards the end of Potter and sort of for a little bit after it finished, you know, it was panic a little bit and not knowing what to do next, and not being comfortable enough in who I was to remain sober, honestly.
Presenter asks
42:07How have you managed it when others didn't?
It's very hard to say, and I think a huge amount of it does obviously come down to my parents. It comes down to the other people, a lot of the people who I've already mentioned on Potter who were able to give me enough perspective on my life and help me at key moments that I've sort of stayed where I want to be. Honestly, I think the main thing I can attribute it to is that I loved being on set. I think a huge problem for people is that for a lot of people, they get into a situation where they start doing something when they're 10. They are committed for several years. They stop enjoying it. They are, by that point, the breadwinner for their family. So, multiple people are now reliant on them continuing to do this job, and they feel pressured into it and forced into it. And then, if they don't enjoy it, then they go, Well, I will enjoy all the other things that this life gives me, even if I hate the work. … I think the fact that we did it in London, you know, I spend time in LA now and I feel like I'm going insane. I don't know what it would be like to grow up in LA from the age of 10 and continue growing up there.
Presenter asks
45:02What's left on your bucket list before you get there? What would you really like to do that you haven't yet?
I want to write and to direct. I remember Gary [Oldman] actually saying to me, as a director, you have to make a creative decision every second of the day, and how much he loved that. And I think I would love that. I also think I'd love working with a film crew in that way. And I do sometimes stand by when directors are doing stuff now. I go, oh, not like that. God. … I feel like I have to exorcise the annoying critic out of myself by directing something of my own. So, yeah, I would love to do that and I'd love to write, and I'm as always working on things.
“I have been insanely lucky and I think probably out of a vague sense of guilt about having something so amazing happen to you so young and I think I will always have a part of my brain that is going when I first walk into a rehearsal room.”
“you can be the most hard working and the most talented and all those things and you still need a huge amount of luck because there is a wonderfully talented, incredibly hardworking person out there who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I remember literally, and I don't say this to make myself sound like crazily humble, but I remember going around to people on the first film and saying, If I ever get cocky, will you tell me? Will you stop me? Like alerting everybody to that, because I was so paranoid about it happening.”
“I definitely think a lot of the drinking that happened towards the end of Potter and sort of for a little bit after it finished, you know, it was panic a little bit and not knowing what to do next, and not being comfortable enough in who I was to remain sober, honestly.”
“I think the main thing I can attribute it to is that I loved being on set. I think a huge problem for people is that for a lot of people, they get into a situation where they start doing something when they're 10. They are committed for several years. They stop enjoying it. They are, by that point, the breadwinner for their family. So, multiple people are now reliant on them continuing to do this job, and they feel pressured into it and forced into it. And then, if they don't enjoy it, then they go, Well, I will enjoy all the other things that this life gives me, even if I hate the work.”