Why Daniel Radcliffe turned down the “shitty” script for ‘This is the End’
After beginning his film career as the face of one of the greatest fantasy franchises of all time, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has enjoyed experimenting with unconventional performances littered with more traditional efforts over the years. The actor has blended leading roles in romantic comedies such as What If with bizarre onscreen appearances like the one in Swiss Army Man, in which he played a flatulent corpse.
Radcliffe’s cross-over between various film genres and visions showcases a healthy departure from his days as a child star. The actor also recently took the lead in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a satirical parody film depicting comedy musician Weird Al’s life and career. The film, directed by Eric Appel, satirises the rising biopic and its cliches and conventions, alluding to Radcliffe’s appreciation for meta and intelligent comedic writing.
However, there was one comedy script in which the actor could not envision himself performing. This Is the End, a 2013 comedy film, is typical of the frat boy humour epitomising 2010s comedy, directed by Seth Rogen and written by Evan Goldberg. It showcases celebrities playing exaggerated versions of themselves, including James Franco, Jonah Hill, Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera and Emma Watson, surviving an apocalyptic crisis.
Watson appeared alongside Radcliffe in the Harry Potter franchise as Hermoine Granger, a Golden Trio member including Radcliffe’s Harry Potter and Rupert Grint’s Ron Weasley. Likewise to her co-star, Watson has had a successful flourishment from her career as a child star in a singular defining role, as branching out into a comedy starring James Franco and Seth Rogen breaks away from her career image.
Watson overcame confusion towards the script’s subject matter and tone and the public perception of the American comedic cast and appeared in the movie as an exaggerated and caricatured version of herself. However, the same could not be said for Radcliffe, for who the crew were eager to reunite with his beloved co-star in their comedy movie.
“Two years before we brought it to anybody else, we brought it to Daniel Radcliffe, and he rejected it because it was shitty, it wasn’t good enough,” Goldberg shared during an interview with Buzzfeed.
Rogen and Goldberg agreed that Radcliffe was correct in his views about the script’s first draft. However, the actor also went on to reject any re-writes and turned down the crew’s offer to appear. Instead, he chose to work on the mythical black comedy Horns, a film about a grieving man who wakes up one morning to discover he is slowly turning into the Devil. The film was directed by Alexandre Aja and released the same year as This Is the End. Nevertheless, they viewed Radcliffe’s rejection as a learning experience. “It was a bad early version. He taught us a lesson. We learned something from him that day,” Goldberg said.
In spite of this, Goldberg believes things might have played out differently if Radcliffe had been asked to do the film earlier rather than later. “We got too excited, we jumped the gun on that. If we waited another year, I bet he would have done it,” he added.
