Daniel Radcliffe, Mariska Hargitay and the Happiest List on Earth

In theory, I knew that this kind of thing can happen in any family.

Yeah.

Upstanding citizens are always turning out to be secret criminals, and I wouldn't even call my cousin Alan. But it's one thing to know and another thing to do.

New York Times, I'm M. Gesson, and this is the idiot.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Balbaro. This is the Daily on Sunday.

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.

Amen.

A show that insists on creating a new kind of filter, a happier A filter through which ordinary everyday occurrences literally become

The list began after her first attempt. A list of everything brilliant about the world.

The show is called Every Brilliant. It just opened up on Broadway. Ain't it Radcliffe? Asks us the audience to work together with to tell the play's central story.

Ice cream.

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. It's been translated into dozens of languages. It's been produced in hundreds of communities around the world in places like Dublin.

Buen telefono.

This began after her first attempt.

東京?ノーウォーキング began after her first

Let's go.

The list began after her first attempt. A list of everything that was brilliant about the world, everything that was worth living for.

And so today we're gonna tell the story of this show, why it has resonated with so many people, and what it tells us about how to. It's Sunday, April twenty sixth.

Daniel Ratcliffe, welcome to the Daily.

Thank you so much for having me.

We're thrilled to have you.

Thank you.

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 to in an effort to sort of cheer his mum up he starts making a list of every brilliant thing that he can think of about the world.

And and brilliant in the context of the show and in British parlance, i is essentially everything that's good and wonderful.

Yeah, everything that's you know wonderful, great, amazing, joyous um about the world.

Yeah. And just to give some examples. Kazoos, period.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah, a really good orange is peeing in the ocean and nobody knows. The awkward dance of negotiating whether it's going to be a hug or a handshake. Yeah. Um, 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 um list making process.

Bye-bye.

Charlotte is a little bit more. Muito obrigado. Muito obrigado. But the way the play is done, it's this kind of amazing communal experience. Like it 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. Improvise but also kind of not entirely improvise. 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. There are sort of two levels to the audience participation in this show. There's one sort of um 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 coat.

Oh series.

Super Mario

Seven.

People falling over.

And then there is five people who play very significant roles. Heavy show. The heavy lifts. And I they are people that do not know that they will be doing that when they come into the theatre that night. and that I have to try and suss out who I would like to use and then if they would like to be used. We do we do get uh you know uh generally speaking people are sort of fairly amenable to it but we do get some 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.

Well, uh you know, I 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 there's nothing else that I've ever read that uh requires me to have this sort of relationship with an audience that I do.

If anyone comes in with any preconceived notions of of m me or being sort of uh star struck or whatever. I feel like that that first half hour kind of breaks that down because you see me running around sweating like you see it y you know, it takes the any sort of illusion or or romance out of me, I think.

One of the barometers for me of the whole show was just how much moisture was

Yeah. 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 swe I don't mind people seeing me sweat. It's it's very evident that I'm running around. People know why it's happening.

Try me then. 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 a 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 r huge crowded room of people with my hat off and no glasses and not trying to you know, not trying to hide, which is normally my M when I go through the rest of my life.

I think I hear you saying that you're getting as much out of these interactions as as we

A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely because sometimes people will amaze you. Just they genuinely say something that is so moving and so real and so unexpected that it it m 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 i in the show who is generally played by an an older woman and

Mrs. Patterson. Yes. That's the role that I think everybody who sees

fixes on t 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. Yeah. And they have to make some real editorial decisions.

Yeah. I mean what's the first scene with Mrs. Patterson is g quite structured and follows, you know, the uh I I generally we we hit pretty much all the same beats in it every night. The last scene is truly th one of the joys of the show is that a lot of different things can happen. So the f th there is a final scene with misses Patterson where

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 fun. At its core, the show is quite serious. It's a quite serious exploration of 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. talking about it from a place of now m being okay or have certainly, you know, have

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 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 I don't think there's anybody that could get to thirty six years old without having either felt that kind of profound sadness themselves or known people who have have experienced that and 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, i just as hard as as as being depressed yourself in in a lot of ways. Um it's always very hard for me to figure out

Yeah.

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 a very direct line between Um 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 w Duncan encouraged us all to like,

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 this 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 the kind of brilliant Oh god, it's so hard. Sorry. It's so hard to describe the show without using that word. Um I had the same thing when I was promoting Weird Al, the movie. I just kept using the word weird all the time. Anyway, so it is one of the I think the extraordinary things this show manages to do is

Yeah, I mean the thing that I experienced Is that everybody who left that theater was in a state of joy, however ephemeral I was in a state of joy. Face hurt, smile.

Oh my god, amazing.

And and for that. I wanna 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.

After the break, we're gonna hear from people from around the world who helped make this show the sensation that it's now become. We'll be right back.

Hey!

I'm Joel.

And I'm not sure.

Juliette from New York Times Games.

We're out here talking to people about games.

You play New York Times games. Yes, every day. Do you have a favorite?

Connections.

That just makes you think. I feel like it gives me um elasticity.

Create four groups of four. Hmm. This is actually.

Pretty cool game. What's your favourite game? The crossword. The crossword? I do it with my brother. We get Thursday sometimes, but I don't think I couldn't do Thursday on my.

I feel like I'm learning. I feel like I'm accomplishing something. I like the doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo when you finish it.

Ha ha ha.

My family does Wordle and we have a huge group chat like my grandma does Wordle like.

Grandma does wear it off.

Oh every day.

Yeah. Do you have a wordle hot take?

You should start with a word that's strategically bad to make it more fun.

All of these games are so fun because it's like a little five to ten minutes like break. I love these games. Yeah.

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Like th this was never the point. It was the to end on Broadway with a show like this.

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 Macmillan and I wrote the play Every Brilliant Thing. small London theatre 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 twenty minute monologue for Rosie Thompson, who is this actress, wonderful actress to do. But it had the whole shape of the show, uh but it had none of the audience interaction. She was asked to do it again um at another small theater and then another one.

I couldn't see how to turn it into a full 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 m I think we can all probably relate to if it's said properly. And then uh I went to see uh Johnny Donohoe, who's a UK uh comedian

I've got a chair because I forgot my guitar stream. Rock!

And the way he uses crowd work is quite unique. He is so warm and trustworthy and he sort of loves

Yeah. Good, we'll throw sweets into the audience which is

I thought, oh, if it can be more like this, I 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 twenty twenty thirteen, twenty twelve.

I had to go and see the school counsellor, who was actually just Mrs. Patterson from the sixth grade.

Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n hyn. Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n hyn. Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n hyn.

Now I'm gonna ask you to be Mrs. Patterson, but I don't want you to worry because you don't have to do much. In fact, you just stay.

Written that there was a sock puppet and you're given a sock puppet and he was like, I can take get them to take their sock off. And I was like, That's never gonna happen and he was like, I can make them take their sock off.

What she would do when you arrived is 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, uh hopefully quite a uh worthwhile and maybe even healing experience. I probably should know it off by heart by this stage. The list began after her first attempt, a list of everything brilliant about the world, everything worth living for. One.

Ice cream.

Yeah.

Three.

Staying up past your bedtime and being allowed to watch last program.

El color verde

five.

롤러코스터

Six. Yeah.

Started the list on November ninth, nineteen.

I started the list on the ninth of November nineteen.

2017년 11월 9일에

Started the list on the ninth of november nineteen eighty seven.

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 number. and she's supposed to be getting on stage and i'm like

It's almost like a dance that we have, you know, with the uh other audience members.

Play with me in the beginning, wanna play in the middle of the

I think it's just solidified for me. really the importance of community. Hi, my name is Greg Dragon.

Hi, my name is Candon 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'd switch off who performs. Basically it's just who's available at the time.

I performed a show on the USS George.

H

W. What?

And make sure they got the whole name in there.

an actual vessel, a navy vessel, which is like mind blowing to think about the

The operations of the US Navy don't just stop because you're putting on a play.

There's like people are margin

There are forklifts driving around behind the audience. Uh at one point an alarm went off.

Alarms going on.

And I thought that's a good thing. Should I be worried?

People are coming up the gangway. Like

I'm trying to deliver my lines in meaningful uh way.

My goal always is to capture them, to connect uh, 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.

Um, and especially one like this where the lights are totally up and they're right there in front of you, uh, and you're interacting with them. Yeah, I it it felt 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, um, or someone has just, you know, um lost their lives to suicide. And It's more of a fragile environment and it's more of a um 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 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?

관객들이 과연

There was a lot of worry about it.

I was in every brilliant thing in Korea. 생각해보면

Korean audience is on the shire 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.

해놓기도 했었거든요 혹시나

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 entire 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.

Like.

After one performance I held my hand and confessed that she had been contemplating uh suicide. Until she saw the play. Just hold my hand and like that. And she said she told me the show changed her mind. The very next month, she organized a performance in her own drawing room for her friends and family.

Give me... Give me interactions that are unforgettable and give me hope. Hi, my name is Erica de la Vega. I have performed every brilliant thing in more than 20 cities in the United States. I've been in Panama. Canadá, República Dominicana, El Salvador y Guatemala. A guy in Washington DC, when I finished the play, he couldn't stand up and leave.

That goes to a play. He went alone and he he didn't believe what he was. experiencing. I spoke with him and we took a picture and and we we were very worried, you know. That month after that, I was performing in Miami and he sent a message to my producer. And he said to her, like, Hi. I'm traveling to Miami and I wanna take some friends to the play.

When we did the restaging in 2024, one young person came I came for the show last year. And there was we we had mental health support. If someone wanted to talk to someone after the play, they could go into a little tent and and talk to someone. And 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.

Uh I'm Tommy Schaufler. I performed every brilliant thing in Juneau, Alaska. After the show closed, I was actually inspired to uh enroll in my college's um master's program in counseling. So I actually finished a uh another master's degree in mental health counseling. So I'm actually moved

I have a lot of beautiful memories with the with the audience during this show. One time A woman was playing Miss Sara. She's the school counselor. In the original production it was Miss Patterson with me in our Virgin uh the name is Miss Sarah. And uh we we improvised together. She was asking me some questions and and I was improvising with her. And at the end she said, but you you are very uh intelligent and very clever and you are so courage and you need to move on.

Swimming.

Staying up late past your bedtime and being allowed to watch TV.

Four people falling over.

Yeah.

Five six. Seven. couldn't remember the rest of the numbers, the audience was saying it themselves.

Mountain Dew

Michael Jordan,

쏙시마르소로

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

The sensation of calm that is to say that a situation lamentable, Nada que puedas hacer al respecto.

All together

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.

What I really believe. Yeah. Faith in how brilliant people can be.

After her first attempt.

First of all.

리스트는 그녀의 첫 번째 시도

Gracias.

Again after that.

After the break, my call with the actress who's about to take over this role on Broadway, Marishka Hargate.

Hey, Marishka, Michael Barbaro here. Thank you for doing this.

I'm couldn't be more excited about it. There's nothing that I'd rather talk about right now. than this. This is something beautiful and brilliant and just feels like a huge gift that uh 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 wanna say, letting your first appearance on Broadway be a high wire act one person audience interaction extravaganza. Is bad.

Exactly.

Is bold.

It's bold, Michael, but it's so up my alley.

Hmm. Why? Because for those who know you through TV. primarily as Captain Olivia Benson from Law and Order S V U. And by the way, when I was watching you were a detective, so congrats on the promotion.

Thank you. Thank you.

This 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.

Um I am very different than Olivia Benson. And I love And I love to connect with humans. And I think, you know, this is what human beings need is community. So I wanna be in community. I wanna give community. I think that there are ways that I am much more like this person. I see um parallels to my own history in this play and um very excited to just explore that.

Well, I wanna 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 Chain. It's a r really bracing, brutal, candid journey of self discovery.

No, not at all. I... Am so drawn to themes of healing and renewal. you know, my movie was about our uh it's a family film, right? It's a movie about our collected pain and our that the universality of family trauma. And I have had some profound conversations with people

Okay, so to end, which brilliant thing from the show's very long list of them speaks to you, Marishka Hargate.

There's just so many for so many different things. So fun is as I started preparing for the play, you know, I made my own list of brilliant things.

Ah 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 with my name on it, pasta with butter and cheese. Wearing a tutu. Starfish. The smell of a baby's head.

Yeah.

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. 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 Sacred. I have a new lens right now, so I'm going into something. So joyful even though the premise of the play there's so much pain there and yet isn't that the way life goes?

at some point to watch.

Thank you.

And to figure out if you're any good at it.

Hahaha

I hope so.

Today's episode was reported and Tina Antellini. It was edited by Wendy Dore. Our production manager.

This episode contains original music by Diane Wong, Alicia Baetube, Dan Powell, Leah Shaw Dameron, Marian Lozano, and Rowan Yemisto. Thanks to Hannah On.

Daily on Sunday. I'm Michael Bobaro.