Daniel Radcliffe Doesn’t Think There’s an Afterlife, and He’s ‘Cool With That’
One needn’t believe in the afterlife to be interested in “Miracle Workers,” a new comedy series from Simon Rich, but it couldn’t hurt. The show is debuting at Sundance before premiering on TBS next month, and Rich visited the IndieWire Studio presented by Dropbox alongside stars Daniel Radcliffe and Karan Soni to discuss, among other things, their beliefs in the afterlife (or lack thereof).
“I don’t tend to believe in an afterlife, but I also don’t know,” said Radcliffe in response to a question from IndieWire’s Christian Blauvelt. “My instinct is that it’s probably more likely I’m just gonna, you know, lie in the ground, and I’m cool with that. I don’t find the idea of there not being an afterlife as depressing as I think a lot of people have, because I think it does make the fact that we only get one chance at this very special. But I don’t know. Maybe; hopefully.”
Per TBS, the first season of “Miracle Workers” is a Heaven-set workplace comedy based on Simon Rich’s book, “What in God’s Name.” Radcliffe plays Craig, a low-level angel responsible for handling all of humanity’s prayers, and Steve Buscemi plays Craig’s boss God, who has pretty much checked out and is ready to move on to his next project. To prevent Earth’s destruction, Craig and fellow angel Eliza (Geraldine Viswanathan) must answer a seemingly impossible prayer: Help two humans fall in love. Soni plays Sanjay, God’s right-hand man.
“My hope for the show was to see if we could come up with a vision of the afterlife that was actually consistent with our experience of life on this planet. I thought, well maybe if the person in charge of it all — in our case played by Steve Buscemi — is maybe a little bit overmatched and in over his head and even a little disillusioned, and maybe that would explain how things sometimes shake out down here. That’s sort of the seed that started it. So that was the goal, to try to come up with a new version.”
Watch the full conversation below.
