What To Know
- Daniel Radcliffe revealed that he, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint were once pitched a remake of The Wizard of Oz with Watson as Dorothy.
- Radcliffe described the idea as “one of the worst” he had ever heard and firmly believed the project should never be made.
- He has recounted this bizarre pitch in multiple interviews, consistently expressing that it would have been a bad move for all involved.
Harry Potter alum Daniel Radcliffe may have taken on the role of wizard, but he wasn’t going to take on a remake of The Wizard of Oz.
In the latest episode of the web series Hot Ones, Radcliffe recalled that prospect as “one of the worst ideas” he has ever heard.
“During Potter, somebody came to us and, I think, asked — like, they wanted to cast all three of us — me, Emma [Watson] and Rupert [Grint] — in a remake of Wizard of Oz, where Emma was Dorothy, I can’t remember what Rupert was, and I just remember I was going to be the [Cowardly Lion], but also, he knew karate. I was like a karate-kicking Cowardly Lion,” he said with a scoff. “I was like 14 or 15, and I was like, ‘I don’t know a lot about the world, but this is a bad idea. This should not be made.’”
Radcliffe — who’s returning to screen in the new NBC comedy The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkinst on Monday, February 23 — previously talked about that “craziest idea” for a Wizard of Oz remake in a 2012 Absolute Radio interview.
“Normally, my agents don’t pass stuff like this along, but this was so funny and mental that they had to,” he said. “They just rang me up and said, ‘How do you fancy playing the Cowardly Lion in a remake of The Wizard of Oz?’ But because it’s a remake and everything, it has to be modern and new and young for no apparently reason.”
He said then, too, that he’d play a karate-kicking Cowardly Lion in that Oz remake and that Watson would have been Dorothy, but that time, he remembered that Grint would be the Scarecrow, while the Tin Man would be “animatronic or something.”
“I just went, ‘No. That would be bad for all of us,’” he said at the time. “Like, there’s nobody who is going to come out well out of that.’”
And in a 2014 interview with Northern Soul, Radcliffe said, “I can remember getting that [pitch] and thinking, ‘That person is the laziest crazy person in the world.’”
