Five Things We Learned From Daniel Radcliffe and the Cast of THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT

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Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones and Bobby Cannavale are getting ready to bring The Lifespan of a Fact to the Broadway stage.

BroadwayWorld chatted with the cast recently about the upcoming production. Here are a few things we learned!

Daniel Radcliffe on his character:

"I play Jim Fingal who is the fact-checker assigned to fact-check John D'Agata, played by Bobby Cannavale's, article about Las Vegas. So, I am basically sent in and I make his life hell for a couple of days by pulling out all of these threads of his article until the whole thing begins to unravel. Then, Cherry plays Emily, who is the editor at the magazine who has to come in and, first of all, stop us from killing each other, and then decide whether or not to ultimately publish the article."

Bobby Cannavale on 'Lifespan of a Fact" Authors John D'Agata And Jim Fingal:

"John and Jim came to visit us and that was interesting. John drove from Iowa here -- he doesn't fly -- and Jim lives in the Pacific Northwest, and they have remained friends. It was interesting to meet those guys. It's interesting because I'm playing him by name, but I'm playing my version of him and that is something he is very happy about. He is not expecting me to dress like him or talk like him or any of that. It is interesting because this story started as an essay written by one person, that was then fact checked by another person, and then they collaborated on a book about that process. So now that's two writers, and then they handed it over to some playwrights who wrote their version of this whole thing, and now it is left for us to play these guys. I feel like there is just so much leeway, thematically-speaking. We are doing our version of their truth."

Cherry Jones on working with Cannavale and Radcliffe:

"We are well-suited to each other. We really, really are. We have such different energy but we both love what we do and we love the camaraderie of what we do. We came into the room and truly felt like...I had known Bobby forever, but I felt like I had known Dan forever. As soon as my friends in London, where I was working this summer, found out I was going to be working with Dan, I started to hear endless stories of what a prince of a guy Dan is. I'm sitting pretty."

Director Leigh Silverman on the show's message:

"It is the question of what tells a better story, and as theater-makers and as artists and as people who love to go to the theater, to go to learn how to live, what does that mean about the stories that we see, that we feel are true? How true are they? Does it matter if it is true or not true? What is the moral center in all of that? I think that there is a real sense right now, because the idea of what is fact and what is fiction in our political environment has been so shredded, that this very notion of "what do we believe to be true about ourselves?" both in a personal way and in a bigger way, I think is just burning in everybody's brain right now."

Leigh Silverman on the cast:

"I mean, they're spectacular! They are so great and they love working on the play. They are deeply invested, they are enormously collaborative, they are dazzling, they are nice, they are easy to work with. This is the new play experience I think that every director dreams of, which is three people who believe passionately in the play, are really good at their jobs, and want to get in there and work as hard as possible to make the best play that we can."

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Written by Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell, and based on the book by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal, The Lifespan of a Fact will begin performances on Thursday, September 20, 2018. Tony nominated director Leigh Silverman directs the world premiere.

Opening night is Thursday, October 18, 2018. The production will play a limited 16-week engagement at Studio 54 on Broadway.

THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT is based on the provocative true story of John D'Agata's essay, "What Happens There," about the Las Vegas suicide of teenager Levi Presley. Jim Fingal, assigned to fact check the piece, ignited a seven-year debate on the blurred lines of what passes for truth in literary nonfiction.