Daniel Radcliffe, Mariska Hargitay and the Happiest List on Earth

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bolvaro. This is The Daily on Sunday. The general heaviness of this moment, the war, the prices, the AI, is not lost on any of us. We cover it every day on this show. Joy and relief, I think it's fair to say, are rare. But a few weeks ago, I found myself genuinely awash in both of those feelings. I had just left a theater in midtown Manhattan where I had seen something unlike anything I'd ever seen before. A show that insists on creating a new kind of filter, a happier filter. A filter through which ordinary, everyday occurrences literally become a reason to live. The list began after her first attempt. A list of everything brilliant about the world. The show is called Every Brilliant Thing. It just opened up on Broadway, starring Daniel Radcliffe. In it, Radcliffe asks us, the audience, to work together with him to tell the play's central story. One. Ice cream. Two. Water fights. Three. More on that. In just a moment. It turns out, I was relatively late to the phenomenon of this show, which has become a kind of global antidote to pain. It's been translated into dozens of languages. It's been produced in hundreds of communities around the world. In places like Dublin. Tokyo. Milwaukee. Even on HBO. A list of everything that was brilliant about the world. Everything that was worth living for. And so today, we're going to tell the story of this show. Why it has resonated with so many people. And what it tells us about how to live in dark times. It's Sunday, April 26th. Daniel Radcliffe, welcome to The Daily. Thank you so much for having me. We're thrilled to have you. Thank you. So, every brilliant thing, as you know, is a very complicated show to explain to somebody who has never seen it before. So, when somebody asks you, Daniel Radcliffe, to describe the show, what do you say? Well, the plot of the show is I play a character who, when they were young, their mother was dealing with very, very serious depression and mental health issues. And so, in an effort to sort of cheer his mom up, he starts making a list of every brilliant thing that he can think of about the world. And brilliant in the context of the show and in British parlance is essentially everything that's good and wonderful. Yeah, everything that's, you know, wonderful, great, amazing, joyous about the world. Yeah. And just to give some examples, kazoos, period. Yeah. Kazoos, actually. Really good oranges. Yeah, really good oranges. Peeing in the ocean and nobody knows. The awkward dance of negotiating whether it's going to be a hug or a handshake. Yeah. So, then it's sort of about how the making of that list follows him into his teenage years and then becomes a kind of coping mechanism for him as an adult and a kind of really an extension of just how he sees the world in this sort of ever-evolving list-making process. My mind was fizzing. Ever since I was little, I'd wanted to understand why my mom had done what she had done. And here was a possible answer, or at least, you know. Part of one. I am so sorry, Professor. Please carry on. But Charlotte is. I left the lecture. You're done. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But the way the play is done, it's this kind of amazing communal experience. Like, it should feel every night like me and the audience are kind of making the play together. Right. So, let's talk about that communal experience. Because audience participation is a huge part of this show. It's improvised, but also kind of not entirely improvised. Before the show even begins, you are out there in the audience. You're walking around. You're talking with people. You're assigning them roles. You're looking for audience members to be in this play with you. So, talk to me about that. Yeah. So, there are sort of two levels to the audience participation in this show. There's one sort of quite a light lift for people where I give people a card that has a number on it and some words. And when I shout out the number, they shout out those words. Five. Roller coasters. Six. Super Mario. Seven. People falling over. And then there is five people who play very significant roles in the show. The heavy lifts. The heavy lifts. And they are people that do not know that they will be doing that when they come into the theater that night. And I have to try and suss out who I would like to use. And then if they would like to be used. We do get. Generally speaking, people are sort of fairly amenable to it. But we do get some absolute hard no's from people sometimes. I mean, it's fascinating that you decided to put yourself in the position of being rejected by members of the audience. Of having these kind of interactions at all. I mean, you're obviously a very well-known actor. Both from your movie work, famously waving the wand as a young boy. To your stage work. You won a Tony for your performance in Merrily. We Roll Along, the musical. In my mind, you've got your pick of the letter. You can do anything you want. So what made you take on such an unusual play? Well, you know, I read the script. And I. From the moment that it said, you know, the actor starts the show in the audience greeting people as they come in and assigning roles. I was immediately like, wait, what is this? You know, there's nothing else that I've ever read that requires me to have this. This is the sort of relationship with an audience that I do. You know, if anyone comes in with any preconceived notions of me or being sort of starstruck or whatever. I feel like that first half hour kind of breaks that down. It shatters it. You see me running around sweating. Like, you see. You know, it takes any sort of illusion or romance out of me, I think, in a really nice way. One of the parameters for me of the whole show was just how much moisture was on your sweater. Yeah, no. My dresser, Sandy, said to me the other day, she was like, do you want an undershirt? And I was like, no. Then I'll sweat more. I said, I don't mind people seeing me sweat. It's very evident that I'm running around. People know why it's happening. It strikes me that the kind of interactions you have to go have in the audience every night, they may not be the thing that most famous actors would relish. I have to say, I think there's something incredibly liberating for me being able to do this. I don't get to be in a room in the way I am in the room for the half hour before the show ever. I don't get to walk into a huge crowded room. I don't get to be in a room full of people with my hat off and no glasses and not trying to hide, which is normally my MO when I go through the rest of my life. And actually being able to go into a room and just go up to people and say, hi, I'm Dan, so nice to meet you, thank you for coming, here's what the show's about. It's just something I don't get to do. There's a line actually in the show, which is one of the many lines that I relate to, where I say, I was not shy, I've been trying to stay constant, level. And there is something about, I think people think of me as being quite shy, but actually I'm really not. I love talking to people, it's just that talking to people and being not shy can have a different knock-on effect in the rest of my life. Whereas actually this is an environment which is like, I can be both myself and quite voluble and just running around, but also there's a certain amount of like, yeah, I don't know, it's hard to. No, I think I hear you saying that you're getting as much out of these interactions as we are. Oh, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. And because sometimes people will amaze you. Genuinely say something that is so moving and so real and so unexpected that it moves me to the exact place where the character needs to be without me trying to have to work to get there. And now that you've been doing the show for a couple of months, do you have a single favorite interaction with an audience member so far? Yeah, I think, you know, we had, there's one of the characters in the show who is generally played by an older woman and. Mrs. Patterson. Yes. That's the role that I think everybody, who sees the play probably fixes on to a degree. And just to explain without giving away too, too much, Mrs. Patterson is a school counselor, gives you in your darker younger days some really important advice, and it requires you to go into the audience and ask someone to take off their shoe, remove their sock, and use it as a sock puppet. And they have to make some real editorial decisions. Yeah, I mean, what's the first scene with Mrs. Patterson is quite structured and follows, you know, I generally, we hit pretty much all the same beats in it every night. The last scene is truly, one of the joys of the show is that a lot of different things can happen. So there is a final scene with Mrs. Patterson where having grown up, I then call on her again to like essentially comfort me in a moment of real despair. And then we had a woman the other day and she, she was incredible and I, you know, when I said to her, I asked Mrs. Patterson, do you remember? what i was like as when i was a kid and she said you were happy sometimes but you were sad sometimes and when you were sad you used to work on your list and then she said and when i'm sad i still work on my list and i just like started crying it was so beautiful and so generous of her to like reach into her actual experience and talk to me that sort of honestly um and the joy of doing this show is that you were exposed on a on a daily basis to people's brilliance and their kindness and actually that's what i say to people a lot when i'm asking people to join in the show i say you don't have to be funny you don't have to be clever if you are those things that's a great bonus the only thing you have to be to make the show work is kind and if you're kind the show flies that's beautiful it's a really it's a beautiful thing to be on the receiving end of a lot of the show is genuinely funny at its core the show is quite serious it's a quite serious exploration of depression and of suicide and i wonder how you get the quotients right the quotient that needs to be serious and sober and honor that weighty subject and the frequent amount of joy and laughter and comedy that's happening yeah i mean there is something about trying to model the behavior of somebody who has been through something very traumatic and has dealt with depression or something like that and i think that's a really has dealt with depression, talking about it from a place of now being okay or have certainly, you know, have worked on themselves enough to be able to talk about it and laugh and see the funny side even in these dark moments that I think there's something kind of hopefully healing about it. I think that's the beauty of the play is that those things do sit alongside each other and there is hopefully something really cathartic, hopefully, in this show. It occurs to me that to be a very young actor living a life in the spotlight, needing to disguise yourself as you go about your life could make a person sad from time to time. And your industry is filled with people who, having lived in the public light as much as you have, really struggle to make it through to adulthood. And so as I watched this role, I did wonder how much any of this at all feels relatable to you. I don't think there's anybody that could get to 36 years old without having either felt that kind of profound sadness themselves or known people who have experienced that. And actually, in some ways, like the helplessness of not being able to lift someone that you love out of their depression is, you know, just as hard as being depressed yourself in a lot of ways. It's always very hard for me to figure out how much of, what I have felt in my life is directly because of fame or like, or without it, you know, I've only ever lived this one way. So I don't I can't separate sort of where what's inherent within me is, you know, separate from like the facts of my life. There's a line in the show, which says one of the brilliant things on the list is reading something which articulates exactly how you feel about something but lack the words to express yourself. Whenever you do find something like that. That says something about the world that you would like to have said yourself, but would never have been smart enough or brilliant enough to that. So there's this there's Swiss Army Man, there's a couple of things that I've done that truly are that to me. And this is one of them. So there's a kind of existentialism about the show, which is that like, you know, maybe there's no inherent meaning in life. But the meaning we pick up along the way about where we find joy and where we find connection and love, that that is the meaning that we create in it ourselves is something that I think I believe. It's a kind of religiosity of everyday joy. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. And being that that is that being its own reward and the finding of those things being meaning in and of itself. This show draws a very, very direct line between happiness and the the ability to notice new wonderful things. And I do think that it's sort of a practice that we all when we were in rehearsal, we Duncan encouraged us all to like, write new brilliant things down on the wall and in case we saw something that in fact, one of them has ended up as one of the last ones we read in the show. Maddie, our head of our props department, wrote down when the windshield wipers wiped to the beat of the song, which is just like a brilliant is a brilliant thing. And I think that it has become sort of a practice of if you just have this frame of sort of seeing the world through the brilliant things that you kind of touch on a daily basis. It has, you know, for me, at least it's been something that I have found a real positive way of sort of moving through the world. Daniel, this show, I'm not breaking any news to you has been a big hit on Broadway with you in it. But it's been a big hit. A lot of places all over the United States all over the United Kingdom, South America, Korea, Bangladesh, Kenya, as a person who's lived inside the show. Why do you think it has been able to have the kind of impact it has in so many different places? No, I mean, I think it's one of the kind of brilliant God, it's so hard. Sorry. It's hard to describe the show without using that word. I had the same thing when I was promoting Weird Al, the movie, I just kept saying the word weird all the time. Anyway, so it is one of the I think the extraordinary things this show manages to do is it finds the universal in the incredibly specific. There is something beautiful about how actually similar we all are, and how we all want basically the same thing. Same things, which is connection, love and joy. Yeah, you know, I, I'm in the show until late May, and then it's carrying on with Mariska Hargitay. And I'm so happy that the versatility of the monologue will be able to be seen by more people. I hope it has a long life here in New York. And I hope it continues to have a life around the world as it has up until this point. And hopefully, you know, the visibility of it being on Broadway can sort of extend that further and further. I think one of the things that I've experienced is that everybody who left that theater was in a state of joy, however, ephemeral, I was in a state of joy, that kind of face hurt smiling. Oh, my God, amazing thing. And, and for that, I want to thank you. You're more than welcome. Thank you for coming and watching it. Thank you for coming into the studio and having this conversation. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. We're going to hear from people from around the world who helped make this show the sensation that it's now become. We'll be right back. Over the past couple of weeks, my colleague, producer Alex Barron, spoke with the creator of Every Brilliant Thing, and a few of the hundreds of actors who have performed it. I'm Duncan McMillan, and I wrote the play Every Brilliant Thing. This is a show that was written, I was asked to do a sort of scratch night thing at a small London theater. And the idea is you do a sort of one-off piece of work, and it's never seen again. And so I wrote this 20-minute. It was a monologue for Rosie Thompson, who is this actress, wonderful actress to do. It had the whole shape of the show, but it had none of the audience interaction. She was asked to do it again at another small theater, and then another one. I was asked to read it at one place, and then at another place, and then other people started reading it. Phoebe Waller-Bridge was one of them. Jarvis Cocker read it. Like, it was, it was this really fun thing. And I was sort of really reluctant to do so. I'd got kind of bored and angered, I suppose, with depictions of suicide and depression as sort of poetic inevitabilities or glamorized or stigmatized. It's much more of an everyday thing that I think we can all probably relate to if it's said properly. And then I went to see Johnny Donahoe, who's a UK comedian. And the way he uses crowd work is quite unique. He is so warm and trustworthy, and he sort of loves you. If you're good, we'll throw sweets into the audience. I thought, oh, if it can be more like this, I'm up for that. Like, you keep the integrity of it being a monologue, but you also, you do it in a way which is inclusive and collective and about the audience. So Johnny started doing it in 2013, 2012. That week was tough. I had to go and see the school counsellor, who was actually just Mrs. Patterson from the sixth grade. There's stuff in there that is purely him. Mrs. Patterson taking her sock off. Now, I'm going to ask you to be Mrs. Patterson, but I don't want you to worry because you don't have to do much. I'd written that there was a sock puppet and you're given a sock puppet. And he was like, I can get them to take their sock off. And I was like, that's never going to happen. And he was like, I can make them take their sock off. When you arrived, if she would first take off one shoe. And then she'd take off the sock. The feeling was, let's show a collective experience where we're all crying together, we're all laughing together and sharing in the truth of that, hopefully quite a worthwhile and maybe even healing experience. I probably should know it off by heart by this stage. Okay, yeah, I got it. A list of everything brilliant about the world, everything worth living for. One. Ice cream. Two. Water fights. Three. Staying up past your bedtime and being allowed to watch last program. Four. El color verde. Five. Rulo gusto. Six. I started the list on the 9th of November, 1996. I started the list on November 9, 19. I started the list on the 9th of November, 1987. My name is Mugambin Thigga, and I performed Every Brilliant Thing in Nairobi, Kenya. A director I work with reached out. She said that there was a mental health summit that was coming up, and they wanted a big finisher. And so she found this play, Every Brilliant Thing. I don't think anyone had a chance to do it. I don't think anyone had expected what was coming. You know, first of all, we're not in a theater. We're in a tent. Chairs on a concrete basketball court over which they'd put a tent. I came out before the play began. I was saying hi to everyone. I was giving out the numbers. And they were like, aren't you supposed to be getting on stage? And I'm like, I actually am on stage right now. It's begun. It's begun. Just, you know, take this. And when I call out that number, just call out the number. No one had any idea what we were doing. And when the play began, just a couple minutes in, they were locked in. You know, I call out number one, and someone goes ice cream, and they're like, oh, someone else has a piece of paper. Two, three, four. Okay, I know what's going on now. It's almost like a dance that we have, you know, with the other audience members. The one that didn't want to play with me in the beginning wanted to play. In the middle of the play. I think it's just solidified for me, really, the importance of community. Hi, my name is Greg Dragas. Hi, my name is Candin Jeanette. And I performed Every Brilliant Thing in Virginia. And I have performed this wonderful show with Virginia Stage Company and a gazillion different places. We switch off who performs. Basically, it's just who's available at the time. I performed the show on the U.S. U.S.S. George H.W. Bush. Make sure they got the whole name in there. An actual vessel, a Navy vessel, which is, like, mind-blowing to think about. The operations of the U.S. Navy don't just stop because you're putting on a play. There's, like, people are marching. There are forklifts driving around behind the audience. At one point, an alarm went off. Alarm's going off. And I thought, should I be worried? People are coming up the gangway. I'm trying to deliver my line. I'm trying to deliver my lines in a meaningful way. My goal always is to capture them, to connect, you know, eye-to-eye contact. You know, you can tell during a show if an audience is with you or not. And in that space, getting through to them wasn't a hard thing. Especially one like this, where the lights are totally up and they're right there in front of you. And you're interacting with them. Yeah, it felt like a good. It felt like a good show. I remember learning as we were going in to do these shows on the aircraft carrier that apparently there had been one week where three crew members had taken their own lives just on that ship. This has been more than once where we've come in and performed the show because there's either been a spike in the number of suicides or someone has just, you know, lost their life to suicide. And it's more of a fragile environment. And it's more of a need to really get that message out there. The Navy shows that we've done do strike me as some of the most important that we do. We have partnered with local organizations that will come out to our show. So we'll have our show and we will also give out resources and connect to people who can continue that conversation after we're done. I'm sure there were folks that were probably not super comfortable with what we were doing. But for those that are more willing to participate, those opportunities there. Doing the Navy shows is especially challenging for the Mrs. Patterson scene because they look at you like, I am not taking part of my uniform off. Maybe they don't know if they're even allowed at that time to take their part of their uniform off. In Miami, I can tell you, that nobody uses socks. We have to ask for scarves. Can you use your scarf? There was a lot of worry about, will the audience, especially when they play Mrs. Patterson, taking their shoe off and putting a sock on their hand, be able to take on the role without feeling uncomfortable? I'm Tae-byul Jung. I was in every brilliant thing in Korea. Our Korean audience is on the shyer side. And as an actor myself, I'm on the more introverted side too. So we actually prepared socks on our end in case someone would be unable to take off their own socks. I don't think there was anyone who asked for that. Everyone, although they are shy, in that moment, was so eager to help the actor out. When they participate without hesitation, those moments are memorable. We wanted to enter their own space, where they feel safe. Hello, I am Mohsin Akhtar, and I performed in every brilliant thing in Bangladesh. I have performed in living rooms, cafes, offices, and libraries, and even hospitals. When this issue is explored, in a private setting, among friends and family, through this performance, everyone can begin to understand and empathize with one another. And after the show, of course, they feel that we have a common ground somehow, and I am maybe a part of their lives. Like after one performance, I had to go through a lot of pressure to be a part of it. And I think that's why I decided to do this. I think that's why I chose to do this. - Go change her mind. The very next month, she organized a performance in her own drawing room for her friends and family. - This play give me miracles, give me interactions that are unforgettable, and give me hope. Hi, my name is Erika de la Vega. I have performed every brilliant thing in more than 20 cities in the United States. I've been in Panama, Chile, Canada, Republica Dominicana, El Salvador, and Guatemala. A guy in Washington, D.C., when I finished the play, he couldn't stand up and leave. And my producers like sat down with him and tell me what's going on. You are here, Erika is over there. She's gonna take some pictures. What's going on? And he told her that he was thinking about taking his life the day before, but something tell him that go to a play. He went alone and he didn't believe what he was experiencing. I spoke with him and we took a picture and we were very worried, you know? And I told him that I had to leave the show. she did and that started her journey in seeking therapy, and when she was coming for the play a year later, she said, I'm coming to celebrate one year of therapy. I'm Tommy Schaffler. I performed Every Brilliant Thing in Juneau, Alaska. After the show closed, I was actually inspired to enroll in my college's master's program in counseling. So I actually finished another master's degree in mental health counseling. So I'm actually moved to where I'm now working in counseling. I had many hugs from, long hugs sometimes from strangers who are not strangers anymore after the show. I'm Nanda Mohamed. I performed Every Brilliant Thing in Egypt and the Arab world. I have a lot of beautiful memories with the audience during this show. One time, a woman was playing Miss Sarah. She's the school counselor. In the original production, it was Miss Patterson with me in our version. The name is Miss Sarah. And we improvised together. She was asking me some questions and I was improvising with her. And at the end, she said, but you are very intelligent and very clever and you are so courage and you need to move on. She was so sincere and genuine when she was saying that. And then I said to her, honestly, I feel that I can't move on. She said, do you remember your list? So I said, no, I don't remember anything. And she started to yell at the numbers. She said, one, two, swimming. She was like, three, staying up late past your bedtime and being allowed to watch TV. Four, people falling over. Five, six, seven. And when she couldn't remember the rest of the numbers, the audience was saying it themselves. Mountain Dew. Michael Jordan. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Bengali flower called Hegel. La sensación de calma que viene al darte cuenta que, antes, ante una situación lamentable, no hay nada que puedas hacer al respecto. And they were all together shouting all the lists. And I was like, oh my God, they happened. They finished it. It was very beautiful. I can't, I will never forget her. I think if I heard about this play and thought, oh, it's a show about, you know, if you just, if you only look at the bright side of life, you'll be okay. That's not what I'm trying to say at all. What I really believe in is the power of people and the power of actual genuine connection with human beings. And I believe in asking for help when you need it and giving help when asked for it. Experiencing the show should re-energize your faith in how brilliant people can be. After the break, my call with the actress who's about to take over this role on Broadway, Mariska Hargitay. We'll be right back. After the break, my call with the actress who's about to take over this role on Broadway, This is something beautiful and brilliant and just feels like a big, huge gift that landed in my lap. And just to explain, in a few weeks, you're set to take over the central role in Every Brilliant Thing. This is your first time, correct me if I'm wrong, on Broadway. This is my Broadway debut. I mean, I just want to say, letting your first appearance on Broadway be a high wire act one person, one person, one person, one person. audience interaction extravaganza is bold. Exactly. Well said. Well said. Is bold. It's bold, Michael, but it's so up my alley. Why? Because for those who know you through TV, primarily as Captain Olivia Benson from Law & Order SVU, and by the way, when I was watching, you were a detective, so congrats on the promotion. Thank you. Thank you. This might seem like a pretty unusual career turn, and so I want to understand why you think it's up your alley, how you decided to do not just Broadway, but why this show? I am very different than Olivia Benson, and I love humans, and I love to connect with humans. And I think, you know, this is what human beings need. What humans need is community. So I want to be in community. I want to give community. I think that there are ways that I am much more like this person. I see parallels to my own history in this play, and I'm very excited to just explore that. Well, I want to talk about those parallels to your life that you just mentioned, because I just saw. the documentary that you made about your mother, Jane Mansfield. The documentary is called My Mom, Jane. And it's. it's a really bracing, brutal, candid journey of self-discovery, because your mother died when you were three years old, and it seems like you've spent a lot of your adult life trying to understand that. How did you find this mother that you never really knew? And after seeing the film and seeing Every Brilliant Thing, I started to see so many parallels to the character in Every Brilliant Thing. Am I being too much of a dime store psychologist here? No, not at all. I am so drawn to themes of healing and renewal. You know, my movie was about our. It's a family film, right? It's a movie about our collected pain and the universality of family trauma. And I have had some profound conversations with people after the film because of what it brought up in them, right? For me, I made a film about my family, about my mother, right? And you'd think like, wow, that has nothing to do with me. And yet, that's not the takeaway of the film. The takeaway is mourning and identity and love and pain. And in these pains is where we do connect, right? When somebody shares their history with you is all that makes you feel is compassion and love for them. And so that is what this play, I think, leads us with is such beautiful empathy and compassion. And again, the resiliency and the triumph of the human spirit. Okay, so to end, which brilliant thing from the show's very long story, a long list of them, speaks to you, Mariska Hargitay, the most? There's just so many for so many different reasons. And what was so fun is as I started preparing for the play, you know, I made my own list of brilliant things. Oh, can you tell me one from your own personal list if I can pry? Oh my gosh, I have it right here. How about this? Are you ready? Yes. Speed Racer, Six Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, Jolly Ranchers, Things Monogrammed. That's my name. That's my name on it. Pasta with butter and cheese. Wearing a tutu. Starfish. The smell of a baby's head. Blowing bubbles out of a wand. Gardenias. The first summer jump into a pool. Your first time putting your feet in the ocean. At the beginning of summer. Cherries. A coffee with heart put in the foam. A full moon. You know, when my husband hands me my coffee in the morning, there's just these little moments now that are so sacred. I have a new lens right now. So I'm going into something that is so joyful, even though the premise of the play, there's so much pain there. And yet, isn't that the way life goes? We laugh, we cry, and life is hard. But it's also so joyful if you can see it. Well, Mariska, we will not only be rooting for you, we will be in the audience. audience at some point to watch. Thank you. and to figure out if you're any good at it. I hope so. I hope so. Today's episode was reported and produced by Alex Barron, with help from Tina Antolini. It was edited by Wendy Dorr. Our production manager is Franny Carthoff. The episode contains original music by Diane Wong, Alicia Baetube, Dan Powell, Leah Shaw-Dameron, Marian Lozano, and Rowan Yamisto, who also engineered the episode. Special thanks to Hannah Ahn and Minju Pak. That's it for The Daily on Sunday. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow. The Daily on Sunday is a production of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders.