New York City, NY—
Daniel Radcliffe, the actor who portrayed the titular character in the Harry Potter film franchise, has spent years being recognized everywhere he goes. Literally every interaction he encounters involves fans who want to talk about Harry Potter, and Radcliffe has had enough.
In a phone interview with The Halfway Post, Radcliffe explained that the only people he enjoys talking to anymore are either blind or illiterate because they don’t bother him about arcane Harry Potter details, wild theories on various plot points, or fan-fiction.
“Almost everyone who approaches me has written fan-fiction about the Harry Potter world that they’re desperate to show me, and 99% of these fan-fictions go one of two ways,” said Radcliffe. “If a girl wrote it, she inevitably marries me at the end. If a guy wrote it, I die at some point and either Ginny or Hermione falls in love with him at the end. You would not believe how many Harry-dies scenes I have read, and some of them are quite f***ed up. I’ve read accounts of my personal dismemberment and torture that are, frankly, unnecessarily and frighteningly gratuitous.”
To avoid Harry Potter superfans, Radcliffe spends much of his free time volunteering for various organizations helping the blind.
“I used to volunteer with some groups helping the illiterate learn to read, but it backfired because I realized I was actually creating new potential Harry Potter fans,” said Radcliffe. “You just cannot possibly fathom what a relief it is for me to talk to people who haven’t read Harry Potter. It’s like my safe space. My favorite people are the blind because we can talk about all kinds of topics without the books or movies ever coming up. Sometimes, though, blind people listen to Harry Potter on tape, and when they bring it up I have to quietly slip out of the room. It takes them a while of talking to no one before they realize I’ve left, but can you blame me? When people don’t recognize me as Harry and they ask me what I do, I tell them I’m an electrician.”
Asked what the worst aspect of his fame was, Radcliffe had an answer immediately.
“Definitely the creepy fan-fiction. I could teach a university-level writing course just from all the terrible fan-fiction people have begged me to read and evaluate, or pass on to J.K. Rowling. I have seen some truly awful writing. But the weirdest fan-fiction writers are the ones who are actually quite talented. A young woman once gave me a 1300-page novel she wrote about Severus Snape’s adolescence, and it was the most beautiful thing I have ever read. It had the psychological depth of The Brothers Karamazov, the social wit of Huckleberry Finn, and the narrative experimentation of To The Lighthouse. It brought me to tears several times. I asked the girl why she didn’t use her obvious talents writing original stories, and she told me that she taught herself lucid dreaming in order to have sex with me every night in her dreams. It’s the really passionate people who scare me the most.”
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