LOS ANGELES — Daniel Radcliffe says that even though J.K. Rowling has resurrected Harry Potter, he doesn’t plan to pick up the wand again any time soon.
Asked at a TV critics press tour about the new short story Rowling posted Tuesday, Radcliffe said, “I’m inclined to say no” to the possibility he could play the well-loved boy wizard on the screen again.
“It’s not even really a hypothetical question now,” he added, noting there’s no indication there would be any film component to the new story that features Harry as an adult.
“I haven’t read it yet, though I will,” the 24-year-old actor said. “But my understanding is that it’s very short, not worthy of adaptation to film.”
He noted that the reincarnated Harry is also “about 12 years older than I am now … So it’s not something I’d have to worry about for a long time, hopefully.”
Radcliffe earlier said that he has deliberately played a wide range of roles since the Harry Potter movies ended, but not to erase the Potter image.
“People may think that’s why,” he said. “But it was more that after playing the same character for such a long time, I’d look at actors like Ben Whishaw, who I admire, playing a variety of roles.
“So I thought I’d like to do it while the going is good.”
Radcliffe was talking to critics to promote the upcoming second season of the Ovation drama “A Young Doctor’s Notebook,” in which he co-stars with Jon Hamm. The “season” is four episodes, which Radcliffe said is all his and Hamm’s schedules would allow.
“I think Jon’s part was actually compressed into two and a half weeks,” he said. “If it had taken any longer than four weeks, we couldn’t have done it.”
Radcliffe said he and Hamm “have a lot of fun” doing the show, in which Radcliffe plays a younger incarnation of an early 20th century Russian doctor, played by Hamm.
Referring to a celebrated scene last year in which he and Hamm shared a bathtub, he laughed and said, “I remember when we got in, we were saying to each other, ‘Well, this picture will go everywhere.'”
