Daniel Radcliffe recalls work that went into ‘Merrily We Roll Along’

Putting the revival cast on film was a goal for director Maria Friedman. In fact, when the idea came up, she admitted the stage version was like an independent film. “She referred to it as ‘Merrily: Close Up,’” star Daniel Radcliffe says.

That meant actors talked close to one another.

“She didn’t mind that our backs were to the audience. She wanted the audience to feel like they were peeking into a room and watching people interact,” says co-star Jonathan Groff. “So it felt organic to bring in cameras to capture and record that, because it felt like, in some ways, we were playing to the camera as much as we were playing to the back row of the theater. It was very intimate from the beginning.”

Three performances of the musical were filmed; some closeups were handled separately.

Those filmed performances were shortly after “Merrily” won the Tony Award for Best Revival, so there was extra energy, according to star Lindsay Mendez.

“We just did the show we were used to doing, and the cameras happened to be there,” she says. “I’ve never filmed anything where I knew this character as well as the one I had played for two years. So that was quite thrilling to film.”

Radcliffe and Groff won Tony Awards for their performances, and the revival is considered a notable success for a show that critics had written off as a flop in the 1980s.

Friedman had experience with the musical (performing in it, staging a revival in London and working with Sondheim), so she was familiar with the original’s pitfalls and how she could make it work. By the time she got to the Broadway cast, she was well-versed in how to fix its problems.

The show got rave reviews when it opened in 2022, becoming a sold-out hit and attracting large crowds outside the theater.

For Radcliffe, the project was a chance to show he had abilities that stretched beyond his successful “Harry Potter” movie series. While he had been in musicals before, he never had a song as complex as “Franklin Shepard Inc.,” a fast-paced patter song that tested his memory and fortitude.

“I screwed up on Broadway one time,” Radcliffe admits. “And it was the longest four minutes of my life. I was amazed how much you can sweat sitting in a chair. I came off stage dripping.

“To get through it, I just turned to Jonathan and grabbed ahold of him, tethering me to the earth at that moment. It only happened once, but it was truly the worst moment of my life on stage.”

To make sure that didn’t happen again, Radcliffe rehearsed relentlessly.

Mendez says few theatergoers probably noticed but she knew she had to get him to move forward once he came off stage.

“I’m like, ‘We’ve got to shake that off,’ because in the next scene, that hasn’t happened because (the show) plays backward. ‘We’ve got many more opportunities,’” she says. “The nice thing about the show is we’re so busy in it that you can’t really live in it for very long.”

Groff says Radcliffe’s recovery was quite deft.

“The way he got himself back is even more remarkable than the thing that went wrong," Groff said. "That, to me, was more of a triumph.”

Now, more than a year after the Broadway run has ended, Groff, Radcliffe and Mendez remain close friends.

“I have missed them both a lot,” Radcliffe says. “When I start working, I’m terrible at maintaining anything else other than work.” He’s currently preparing a one-person show, “Every Brilliant Thing."

For Groff, preserving “Merrily” was a dream come true. He saw the film as a way for his work to sit next to the recorded versions of “Sunday in the Park with George” and “Into the Woods,” two Sondheim shows that inspired him. “We would be able to put another Sondheim masterpiece in the library.”