Daniel Radcliffe Once Revealed the ‘Weirdest Way I’ve Ever Got a Job’ Involved Ricky Gervais
Daniel Radcliffe once teamed up with Golden Globe Ricky Gervais on a satire that was different than anything he’d done at the time.
Being hired for the television series in the first place, however, was a unique process on its own.
Daniel Radcliffe once guest-starred on the Ricky Gervais comedy series ‘Extras’
The Office wasn’t the only comedy series Gervais had a hand in. The comedian is responsible for several successful comedic projects including his short-lived Extras. Extras was a series created, written and directed by Gervais and Stephen Merchant. As its name implies, the show was about the experiences of the extras often seen in the background throughout movies. It would feature many real-life celebrities in the series, including Kate Winslet, Samuel L. Jackson, and Daniel Radcliffe.
Gervais had very little difficulty procuring the celebrity faces that he wanted from the show. It was as easy as simply asking them for their contributions.
“I met Sam Jackson when I did an interview with him and asked him [to do the show]. Then Kate Winslet called me out of the blue and asked if I could sign a David Brent thing for her husband on their first wedding anniversary. So I thought ‘Yep, and you can do a favor for me!’ And then I met various people – Ben Stiller,” Gervais once said in an interview with IGN.
This led to him believing he could recruit pretty much anyone in the film industry for season 2 of Extras.
Daniel Radcliffe felt being cast in ‘Extras’ was the weirdest way he’d ever gotten a job
Radcliffe appeared in the show Extras in the show’s second season. His character in the series would constantly flirt with various ladies on the show in an attempt to woo them. But being hired for the feature was a process that was a bit out of the ordinary for the Weird Al star.
“It’s the weirdest way I’ve ever got a job, without a doubt,” Radcliffe once said according to the Vancouver Sun. “It’s the first time I’ve ever said yes to anything without reading a script — because it was Ricky Gervais. I was in Australia, making December Boys, and we’d been watching the first series of Extras.”
But perhaps what made the situation stranger was him being in the middle of caring for a Kangaroo when he got the part. Radcliffe shared that he was at someone’s house in Australia who had pet Snakes and Kangaroos for him to play with at the time.
“So I spent most of the evening watching a snake crawl around the table and bottle-feeding a kangaroo. And then the phone rang, and it was Ricky Gervais, saying, ‘do you want to be in Extras.’ And that was how I got the job. I was in the other room, bottle-feeding the kangaroo, and my dad came running in with the phone: ‘Umm . . . It’s Ricky Gervais! Can you talk to him?’ And I was, ‘Yeah,'” Radcliffe remembered.
Daniel Radcliffe once shared he was just as known for his role in ‘Extras’ as he was for ‘Harry Potter’
Harry Potter remains one of the actor’s most popular and iconic roles. But his guest appearance on the series Extras also left a lasting impression on his fans. So much so that at one point it seemed his popularity on Extras might have matched his Harry Potter recognition.
“I get [people bringing up] Extras almost as much as I get Harry Potter. It’s generally men between 15 to 25, who don’t really want to come up and gush about Potter – but they do want to say hello. So it’s like, ‘Hey man, I saw you on Extras,'” Radcliffe said.
