Daniel Radcliffe Drafts Jonathan Groff for Vietnam War Thriller

If you thought Daniel Radcliffe would spend the rest of his career either staring wistfully at wands or cashing in on nostalgia, think again. More than fifteen years since saying goodbye to Hogwarts, he has doubled down on weird, risky jobs—sometimes to the bafflement of people who reckon he could have just played it safe. His next role? A gritty, independent Vietnam War thriller called 'Trust the Man', and it is a world away from any magical castle.

The film has just firmed up its main cast. And the process has been, well, a bit messy—classic indie cinema stuff that makes you wonder how anything gets made at all.

A Reunion Worth Noting

'Trust the Man' will stick Radcliffe in a two-hander—a sort of psychological face-off—with Jonathan Groff. Yes, that Jonathan Groff: Mindhunter himself, cheekily remembered by some for singing Frozen tunes, and more recently Agent Smith from The Matrix Resurrections. The fun bit? The two just finished bringing down the house together in the Sondheim revival of 'Merrily We Roll Along' on Broadway. Groff picked up the Tony for lead actor in a musical; Radcliffe landed the featured actor prize. Now, instead of belting songs, it’s all tension and interrogations.

Originally, the film had Lucas Hedges slotted to share the screen with Radcliffe, but apparently the schedule gods intervened and he had to pull out. Groff is now officially in, closing the deal not long ago.

The Plot (As Far As Anyone Knows)

Written and directed by Will Graham—the same Will Graham who co-ran Amazon’s 'Daisy Jones & the Six'—the film strands its leads inside a moral maze. Radcliffe plays an ambitious US Army Intelligence officer sent out to investigate a decorated but rather mysterious soldier. The story gets its drama from the slowly tightening grip of surveillance and interrogation, with the script described as a razor-sharp two-hander: expect a lot of dialogue, simmering tension, and a steady slide from duty into obsession. There's no official word on who exactly Groff will be playing—whether he's the investigator or the investigated—but the vibe is that it’s all about the chemistry (or perhaps, barely-restrained hostility) between these two.

Behind the Scenes

• Director: Will Graham (Invitation Media)
• Producers: Will Graham, Tonia Davis, Max Linsky
• Radcliffe and Groff reunite after their award-winning Broadway stint in 'Merrily We Roll Along'
• Lucas Hedges was first attached as Radcliffe’s co-lead, but left over scheduling
• Groff just finished a run in 'Just in Time' (on Broadway), Radcliffe did 'Every Brilliant Thing'
• Groff’s up next at the RSC as Rosalind in an all-male 'As You Like It'

Casting News and Recent Projects

Groff’s history with pressure-cooker roles (see: his blank-eyed FBI profiler in 'Mindhunter') should serve him well in a film that essentially boils down to two men locked in a mental chess match. He’s also flexed some proper action muscles lately—remember his Agent Smith in 'The Matrix Resurrections'?

Radcliffe, meanwhile, continues to actively shed the Harry Potter skin. Between things like the jailbreak thriller 'Escape from Pretoria' and a recent stint in a network TV mockumentary, he seems positively allergic to typecasting these days. (A handy bit of trivia: HBO is about to embark on a decade-long Harry Potter TV reboot. Radcliffe apparently sent a kind letter to Dominic McLaughlin, the new face of Harry, basically telling him to go off and do his own thing without worrying about living up to the original run.)

The real question now is whether Will Graham can bottle the electric dynamic Radcliffe and Groff showed on stage, but with the singing swapped for surveillance. That, and who gets the juicier part: the interrogator or the mystery man?