In a recent video for GQ where he broke down his many film roles over the years, Radcliffe said it was actually one of Curry’s only quasi-evil characters that inspired his performance in “The Lost City.” Specifically, he drew from the “It” and “Rocky Horror Picture Show” star’s wonderfully silly turn in the 1995 Michael Crichton film adaptation “Congo” as Herkermer Homolka, a self-described Romanian philanthropist whose altruism is actually a front for his lifelong quest to locate a mythical lost city housing precious diamonds.
As Radcliffe noted, Curry’s Mr. Homolka is “not really a bad guy in [‘Congo’], and he’s doing an insane accent so it bears no resemblance really” to his own treasure-hunting character in “The Lost City.” All the same, Radcliffe said it’s a perfect example of what he was going for in the Nee Brothers’ movie. He described this type of performance as “just actors when you see them having a great time, playing a weird kind of villain [or] someone whose motivations are sketchy.”
Along those same lines, Radcliffe cited Cumming’s own hammy villainous roles (think his Russian programmer Boris Grishenko in the 1995 James Bond movie “Goldeneye”) as another source of inspiration. In that case, Radcliffe had even acted with Cumming before on a 2020 stage production of Samuel Beckett’s play “Endgame.” He explained:
“I feel like Alan Cumming – I worked with Alan a few years ago, but he’s also played some fantastic villains over the years. I feel like they’re people to reference, and also just a certain type of posh English boy, you know, entitled, slightly stupid. I’ve met a few so that I could draw on them.”
We only wish “The Lost City” was quite as inspiredly ridiculous as Radcliffe’s performance.