Daniel Radcliffe Reveals the Real Reason He Hasn’t Seen ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child might be a hot ticket on Broadway, but all the hype isn’t enough to get Daniel Radcliffe in the audience.

Radcliffe, who is best known for playing the titular role in the Harry Potter franchise, is currently starring on Broadway alongside Bobby Cannavale (Homecoming, Ant-Man and the Wasp) and Cherry Jones (Boy Erased, Transparent) in The Lifespan of a Fact, a play by John D’Agata.

Despite it only being a 15-minute walk from his theatre to Cursed Child’s, Radcliffe told Seth Meyers on Late Night that he doesn’t plan to see the show.

“I’m probably not going to,” the actor explained, “I don’t have plans to.” While Radcliffe admitted this is a “terrible, boring answer,” he has fairly good reasons.

“Not because, you know, I think it would throw me into some sort of existential crisis,” he joked. (Not that any of us thought that. Honestly, we just assumed he was busy performing in eight whole shows a week.)

In reality, the former child star just feels that “it would not be a relaxing evening at the theatre.”

“I feel like I would be being watched for my reaction,” he explains. He adds that he doesn’t mean to sound “conceited and egotistical” (which, again, we were not thinking), but the performer does feel it would “be a little odd” to be surrounded by fans of Harry Potter.

Seth Meyers points out that seeing Radcliffe in the audience might be “a distraction from the art” for Potterheards. The late night host asked if Radcliffe ever considered going in disguise, but the actor said he swore off that option after a failed attempt to go incognito at a musical festival years ago.

While at Reading Music Festival with Rupert Grint (best known for playing Ron Weasley), the two chums decided to wear World War II gas masks to go unnoticed (and also because they were “young and cool and edgy”).

Unfortunately, they didn’t consider the heat and how difficult it would be to breath. Radcliffe said having to take off the masks, which revealed his identity to the public after running around in such a silly getup, “was not a good feeling” and “swore [him] off disguises.”

Daniel Radcliffe might be skipping the show, but that doesn’t mean you have to. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is currently playing at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway in New York City.