Helix leather jacket, AllSaints ($520). 512 Broadway; allsaints.com. Black coated skinny-fit jeans, Gap ($69.50). 513 Broadway; gap.com. Chambray shirt with edged placket, Burberry Prorsum ($350). 9 E. 57th St.; burberry.com. 1000 Mile Original boots, Wolverine ($350). Leffot, 10 Christopher St.; wolverine.com. Admirals Cup Chronograph 44 Centro-Monopusher, Corum ($7,900). Tourneau TimeMachine, 12 E. 57th St.; tourneau.com. Zazenne small cabinet in shiny steel, ABC Carpet & Home ($4,495). 888 Broadway; abchome.com.
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Daniel Radcliffe admits he’s terrified. At the time of this interview he’s two months away from opening his first Broadway musical, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and on the eve of his first rehearsal he knows he has much to prove. “When you see a musical, it’s so complete, so massive that I can’t personally imagine where you could possibly start!” he says before realizing how funny that might sound coming from the star of one of the most fantastical film franchises ever. “Harry Potter is wizardry on film. It’s a certain amount of technical effects, and I know how that works, whereas in Broadway musicals, there are no effects. It’s just manpower and technical skill that create all that enormity.”
When Radcliffe explains himself there’s no hint of false modesty, and the word precocious has finally been retired as a way to characterize the 21-year-old, who has grown up considerably even since his Broadway debut in 2008’s Equus, for which he famously had to strip down every night. The London native plans to perform in How to Succeed in Business into 2012, and he’s pleased to restore his status as Englishman in New York. “There is something very special about being English in this city, because there’s a certain fascination with British culture,” he says. “I don’t know what it is, but I feel a lot cooler here than I do in England.”
Radcliffe in New York
Though he admits that “Page Six” won’t likely be reporting stories of his late nights at Avenue (“I’m much happier at home in front of the History Channel”), he does have a penchant for La Esquina dinners, ping-pong in Battery Park and anonymous walks in the West Village. “It’s quite good being this short; you just put your hood up and no one gives you a second glance really,” he says. The work is what makes him uniquely happy in New York. “I’ve never felt better about myself as an actor than when I was on Broadway doing Equus, because I felt part of an artistic community. And I’m not slagging off London, because I love it, but the interplay and the amount of socializing between the shows in New York—it’s just glorious and doesn’t happen in the West End as far as I can tell.”
