Daniel Radcliffe Doesn't Want to Be Asked About the New 'Harry Potter' Cast

Daniel Radcliffe is currently starring on Broadway in Every Brilliant Thing and on NBC’s new comedy The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (the pilot aired last month, but new episodes won’t arrive until the 23rd). He’s also busy being the menschiest mensch among mensches, telling the press that they should stop asking the original Harry Potter cast about the new HBO Harry Potter cast, but perhaps not for the reason you might be thinking.

It’s not necessarily because Radcliffe minds being asked. Or because he’s tired of talking about Harry Potter. It’s because he wants to protect the new cast.

“When these kids got cast, there is a whole thing around the internet being like, ‘We have to look after these kids!’” Radcliffe told Screenrant. “If you really mean that, then one of the things you can do is don’t ask about us — me, Emma [Watson], and Rupert [Grint] — all the time. I would like not to be weird spectral phantoms in these children’s lives. Just let them get on [with it]. It’s going to be a new, different thing. I’m sure Dominic [McLaughlin] is going to be better than me.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone inhabiting that role better than Radcliffe, not because he was necessarily a brilliant child actor, but because he was Harry Potter for a decade. But then again, it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone even cares about a new Harry Potter series, mostly because I don’t know any kids (and I know a lot of them) who have any interest in even the book series anymore. They’ve moved on to, best I can tell, The Inheritance Games series and the One Piece graphic novels.

It’s worth noting, too, that Radcliffe did send McLaughlin a letter last year, much to the delight of the new Harry Potter, saying, among other things, “I hope you have the best time, and an even better time than I did — I had a great time, but I hope you have an even better time.”

Now is also a good time to remind everyone that the first Harry Potter movie debuted … 25 years ago, and that Daniel Radcliffe is now the same age as Wilford Brimley in Cocoon.

(That last part was not true, but you considered it for a second, didn’t you? Also, Rachel McAdams is only two years younger than Brimley in Cocoon.)