WAMG Talks HORNS With DANIEL RADCLIFFE

HORNS is in theaters and On-Demand just in time to quench your fantasy withdrawal now that Halloween has come and gone. Last week, WAMG sat down with star Daniel Radcliffe in a small press conference to talk about his role of Ig in the film, SHARKNADO 2 : THE SECOND ONE (because, why not?), and his sweet flow on ‘The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.’ Check it out below.

Based on the novel by Joe Hill, Horns is a supernatural thriller driven by fantasy, mystery and romance. The film follows Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe, “Harry Potter” films), the number one suspect for the violent rape and murder of his girlfriend, Merrin (Juno Temple). Hungover from a night of hard drinking, Ig awakens one morning to find horns starting to grow from his own head and soon realizes their power drives people to confess their sins and give in to their most selfish and unspeakable impulses – an effective tool in his quest to discover the true circumstances of his late girlfriend’s tragedy and for exacting revenge on her killer.

What it is about the allegory that Joe created in the novel, that was then translated into the script that let you come back into this serpentine world of a little biblical flair?

DANIEL RADCLIFFE : Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing. I suppose because Joe’s world in and of itself is so striking, and real, and exciting that there was never a moment where I was thinking… and you know, I think because Potter was such a part of my life I never think of the comparisons that other people might make, or similarities that might be drawn. The thing that attracted me to it was just the fact that it was so bold, and so heartbreaking and beautiful, and the story of this guys journey was something that I really connected to. And I felt like the allegory of turning into what you’re perceived as or feeling like an outsider, or being made to feel like an outsider is very strong, and something that I, and hopefully a lot of people can connect to.

Was it kind of fun having the reporters attack each other, or would you like to have that happen? [Laughs]

DANIEL RADCLIFFE : Yeah! Absolutley.

We could recreate that here!

DANIEL RADCLIFFE : Yeah! I was just going to say! This is kind of a fine opportunity! [laughs] Um. That’s a great scene. I won’t lie, like I took no small pleasure in that moment of catharsis. I mean, yeah. It’s one of the fun parts of the film, as well. It’s great that you have all of those great, fun moments in the film because the film also takes some dark, heavy turns as well. Yeah, I mean. I promise that I don’t think of you all in that way, but if I could hand-pick five or six journalists from the UK and sort of arrange a cage fight, I would. [Laughs]

Tell us about wearing the horns. Were they heavy? After a while did they start to look normal?

DANIEL RADCLIFFE : They looked really normal, and really quickly. That was what was remarkable about them, was that… Whenever you see a line in a script, and it says ‘The character has horns’ you go ‘Well, in my imagination that sounds fantastic, but how will it actually look?’ So, the first time I saw them on it was kind of a combination of relief, because they looked fantastic, and excitement. When you have something stuck to your head that can go either way. That has the potential to look silly, and it really doesn’t. The word ‘organic’ is one of my sort of most hated, overused words ‘Oh, just make it organic’ but they do. They look like they’re made out of organic material, and actually coming from my head. They only took, like, twenty minutes to put on. They were really fast.

With the inditement that these people [in the film] make, and how quickly they are to judge, are you able to relate and what could you bring to that from your experience? 

DANIEL RADCLIFFE : Sure. I mean I definitely think that you relate, and magnify and distort things from your own life to help working as an actor. Definitely a theme in my life has been the gap between how I’m perceived and who I know myself to be… not that anyone has ever thought that I’ve killed someone, but the idea and the principle are kind of the same.

I’m curious about your experience working with the snakes in the film, and also Daniel, during the HORNS press conference at Comic-Con you mentioned your excitement for SHARKNADO 2 and I’m just curious if it lived up to the hype?

DANIEL RADCLIFFE : It totally did, obviously! [Laughs] It’s fantastic! And then, like a day later I met Tara Reid, and Ian Zering over the course of the next few days and was able to wax lyrical about it. I have a real affection for films like that, and with the second one, they knew even more, like they were even more self-aware and knew more what people liked about it and were able to make it bigger, and louder, and sillier, and fun. So, yeah, it was great… and what was the first part of your question? Snakes! [Laughs] They were fantastic! I actually didn’t know before doing the movie if I was comfortable with snakes. Turns out I’m extremely comfortable with snakes. I may have been completely projecting human emotions onto this creature, but I became completely convinced that she was very affectionate by the end. Because they get cold. Snakes aren’t cold-blooded. This was my favorite word I leaned on the shoot: they’re ‘poikilothermic,’ which means they can’t control their body temperature. So, whatever temperature it is outside, they will be. So they’re freezing, and then you’re really warm so they just love you and they just hug you, [laughs] but not in a constricting kind of way. So yeah, I really like them. We had one scene with a hundred live snakes, which was awesome. Yeah. Talk to Max Minghella about snakes. He’s not such a fan.

In this movie your characters are also played by actors at a younger age, and it got me to thinking about Jodie Foster’s comments on CONTACT, and how her performance was informed by Jena Malone’s. I was wondering if you had a similar experience with that, or if it was the other way around?

DANIEL RADCLIFFE : It was interesting because we didn’t really see a tremendous amount of what the kids were doing.I was off when they were doing stuff… I would be getting made up, or de-made up, or something would be going on so they would try to time it like that, so I really didn’t get to see a lot what they were doing. I got to spend a lot of time particularly with Mitchell on the movie. Mitchell is like I was when I was 13. He’s a kid from Winnipeg, and he’s like, a kid. He must be 14 now. He’s awesome… I just like the face that he’s blonde naturally. He’s got much fairer hair than I do, and they dyed his hair on the first day. And he went back to his hotel in Vancouver, and then nobody knew what he was doing and one of the girls said, ‘Oh you look like Harry Potter.’ It made his day. [Laughs] He was so happy. It’s a very hard job on the casting department to cast somebody to play young me, when everybody knows exactly what I look like at that age, and they did I think a brilliant job.

Is there a direct through line between learning your lines as an actor to actually being a good and efficient rapper? [Laughs]

DANIEL RADCLIFFE : I don’t think so. I don’t know if the two are connected. I mean, maybe the fact that I learn lines a lot helped me learn that song. I don’t know, because I do take things in aurally, the a-u aurally… sort of, very well. I went on the Fallon show and I rapped last night… It was amazing because I said in an interview ages ago, it was one of those things like, ‘Tell us something we don’t know about you.’ And I’d done a million interviews so I’m really struggling at this point to find something you don’t know about me. So I thought, ‘Well, I know all the words to ‘Alphabet Aerobics’ by Blackalicious.’ And then Rob, who always produces me on Fallon, called me up when we were doing press for WHAT IF and was like, ‘Could you do that on the show?’ and I was like ‘I… uh… I don’t know!’ I sort of freaked out. Then when we came to do it this time, he was like, ‘The Roots really want to do it with you.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, OK!’… Then what I didn’t realize was that I did the rehearsal, then Questlove came back into the dressing room and was like, ‘Yeah man, I’m going to text those guys. They’re going to be really excited. I produced their second album.’ So I was like, ‘Oh, OK. You, like, are friends with these guys.’ So I might not have been as bold as to suggest that had I known that, but I’m amazingly glad I did it. I was, like, shaking with adrenaline for a couple of minutes afterwards. It was awesome.

FOR MORE INFO :

WEBSITE: http://radiustwc.com/releases/horns/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/hornsfilm

HORNS is in theaters and On-Demand now