"Ease of arse smuggling" - Daniel Radcliffe on new prison break drama

Video Credit: Reuters Studio
Published on March 6, 2020 - Duration: 03:00s

"Ease of arse smuggling" - Daniel Radcliffe on new prison break drama

The "Harry Potter" star plays former real-life political prisoner Tim Jenkin in anti-apartheid film "Escape from Pretoria".

Jenkin joined Radcliffe on set and revealed more than one stark truth.


"Ease of arse smuggling" - Daniel Radcliffe on new prison break drama

Daniel Radcliffe learned from a former political prisoner just how easy it was to rectally smuggle things into prison while filming his new prison break drama set in anti-apartheid 1970s South Africa.

In "Escape from Pretoria", the "Harry Potter" star plays real-life activist Tim Jenkin, whose book the new film is based on.

Jenkin, a white South African, was imprisoned in 1978 for working undercover for Nelson Mandela's banned African National Congress (ANC).

The film tells the story of how he, along with fellow inmate Stephen Lee (played by Daniel Webber), escaped from Pretoria Maximum Security prison, only armed with wooden keys that Jenkin crafted.

Jenkin spent time on set with Radcliffe, even appearing onscreen as a prison extra, and shared some of his experiences with the actor, including divulging how films are incorrect when showing prisoners struggling to smuggle items into prison.

"One thing he did mention that they always get wrong in films... is stuff going up your arse," Radcliffe told Reuters on Thursday (March 5).

"I can't remember what his exact words were, but it was something like he was actually more surprised by how quickly and easily it went in, rather than the opposite of struggling.

That is something that really stayed with me!" To prepare for the role, Radcliffe said debut British writer-director Francis Annan told the cast to watch two French prison break films, "A Man Escaped" (1956) and 1960's "Le Trou" ("The Hole").

The actor also said he had seen 1979's quintessential prison break film "Escape from Alcatraz" many years ago when he was 12 and travelling in San Francisco.

Rather than being a documentation of the history of South African apartheid, Radcliffe said "Escape from Pretoria" honours Jenkin's story and that period of history, but he does not view the film as primarily a political one.

The 30-year-old, who also said he would never ruled out playing the boy wizard again, joked about how he would fare in jail.

"If I was in prison, I would be just going, okay, I'm gonna settle in and get some reading done," said Radcliffe.

(Production: Lisa Giles-Keddie, Mindy Burrows)

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