You must have genuinely loved doing Cripple of Inishmaan in London to reprise it over here. What makes you most excited to pick up Billy’s hat again?
DANIEL RADCLIFFE: It was all in all a really, really great experience last year. I love the play, I’ve worked on Broadway shows twice now, and I love working and living in New York. It’s one of those situations where the chance to spend a lot of time in a city that I love doing a play that I love was really, really exciting.

The playwright, Martin McDonagh, is definitely not for everyone, and this show can get pretty brutal. What’s your experience with dark humor?
RADCLIFFE: I like dark comedy, I think I’ve always liked watching it as well as doing it. I know that Martin is a very dark writer, and actually this is one of his least violent plays. What I think is impressive about the play as a whole is that it manages to be so cruel but also has this heart. When you think about the play at first, you think about it as this dark comedy, but I actually don’t think people expected it to have this really heartbreaking, very beautiful, very tender side to it as well, and I think that’s what makes it work. I feel like the last scene from this play leaves the theater with people when they go.

This is your third time on Broadway. What were the biggest lessons you learned in Equus and How to Succeed?
RADCLIFFE: Equus was a total learning experience, working with Richard Griffiths every day and being able to watch and learn from him. Also, at the same time that we started Equus, there were a couple of shows that I very distinctly remember had big-name casts and were really great plays that didn’t necessarily last very long, and I just remember that as a wake-up call.

Not that I was ever being complacent, but I remember thinking it doesn’t matter who you’ve got in your show; it has to be a good show that people want to see, otherwise it won’t survive in New York. And then from How to Succeed, I did that show for 11 months, so that just taught me a lot about stamina onstage and finding ways of keeping a show fresh for 300 performances. It’s a real test and it’s a great test, and it’s one I really, really enjoyed. Who knows if I’ll ever do a run of a play or show that long again? But if I get a 12-week or 14-week or 30-week run, I can go, “Well, I know I can do that, I’ve done that before.”

You’ve done a musical, you’ve done drama, you’ve done dark comedy, adventure, everything. What other sort of roles are on your bucket list?
RADCLIFFE: Combining two of those things. I would love to do a big film musical. I think when they’re done right, they’re incredibly exciting and fun and cool. Everyone thinks of the ones that come to mind immediately like Grease and things like that, but what was that slightly bizarre but wonderful John Turturro film? Romance & Cigarettes. It’s a bizarre musical, and I love weird, interesting, different stuff like that.