In light of Sunday’s Tony Awards, WNYC is revisiting some of the conversations we’ve had with people doing exciting work on Broadway.

“Merrily We Roll Along” has had a phenomenal run on Broadway. The musical is nominated for seven awards at this Sunday’s Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical.

But the show wasn’t always so celebrated. In fact, the story of the 1981 production of “Merrily We Roll Along” is legendary, almost infamous.

With a score by Stephen Sondheim, a book by George Furth, and Hal Prince directing, what could go wrong?

Well, everything. It flopped. Audiences left during intermission, and it closed within two weeks. Sondheim and Prince didn’t work together for years.

When brave souls attempt to tackle this story of friendship through the ages, there’s always the question: Will it work?

Given the play’s seven Tony nominations and huge buzz on Broadway, indications suggest that this revival did work.

Jonathan Groff plays Franklin Shepard, an earnest composer who sells out to make movies, to the chagrin of his friend Charley Kringas, played by Daniel Radcliffe, in his first ever Tony-nominated role.

Lindsay Mendez stars as Mary, a once-celebrated novelist turned theater critic turned alcoholic, who’s always been in love with Frank. The play starts in Los Angeles at the height of Frank’s fame and, in some ways, pain. His real friends can’t stand him. He can’t stand himself.

From there, the show goes backward in time — from the 1970s to the ’50s — to show the audience how it all unraveled.

Radcliffe and Mendez joined Alison Stewart on an episode of “All Of It” in December 2022 to discuss the show and what they hoped audiences would feel after seeing it. Since then, both actors have been nominated for Tony awards for their performances. Below is an edited version of that conversation.

Allison Stewart: Daniel, what questions did you have going into this?

Daniel Radcliffe: It’s interesting, because the only production I’ve ever seen of this show was this one in London in 2013, where it also worked and was brilliant. I found out, “Oh, ‘Merrily’ has a problematic history or a pitfalls history or whatever,” after having seen a version that works spectacularly. I didn’t have as many of those worries.

I think we focused very much on it being about the friendship rather than it being a comment on selling out and commerce versus art and those things. They’re there, they’re a part of the story, but they’re not the thing that gets you hooked into these people and their love of each other.

As you said in your really brilliant recap — by the way, I definitely couldn’t summarize the story that well — Frank just wants to make movies. It’s not a crime. I think it’s much less a story about one guy doing something wrong and the other people in his life berating him for it. It’s just people going in different directions and no one’s wrong in this story. Everybody just wants each other but also wants different things at the same time, which, I think, makes it so painful.

As someone in the arts, Lindsay, is there one character you can particularly relate to?

Lindsay Mendez: I think all of them! You look at Frank, Jon’s character, who’s just trying to be a success and trying to make it and keeps seeing the next prize and the next prize, and it doesn’t matter if someone looks at him as selling out or taking something cheap. It’s like, “I want to live. I want to get to the next level. This is fun.”

As opposed to Charley, Dan’s character, and Mary saying more like, “Don’t sell out. Only do the work that inspires you and that says something and that means something.”

I’ve gone through that many a time in my career where I’m like, “Oh, no. Do I want to do X and Y jukebox musical? What is the message? Do I feel like I’m standing behind something important?”

But also like, “I have a child, and I have to eat and support myself and keep a career going.” Those questions, I think, we’re constantly asking: “Why did I become an artist? What is the goal here?”

When you become an artist, you want to do great art and you don’t always learn that you have to get insurance and pay your bills and keep up a life, too. I feel so close to the story in all of these characters’ struggles with that.

How about you, Daniel? When you could have stayed in a much more commercial vein, you’ve made some interesting choices that it’s a little meta in the show in a moment or two.

Right. I was put in such a rare position, both professionally and financially, by the “Harry Potter” films, that I could say, in 2021, “The most commercially and financially successful thing you have ever done is done and is behind you. You will not do that again. What do you want your career to be now? What do you want out of this?”

I really like being on film sets and being on stage and just doing this stuff for the sake of doing it and getting to work with the people that I work with.

I relate to Charley’s argument a lot because I don’t think he’s saying, “Don’t make money, don’t be successful.” He’s just saying, “Do the things you love that you want to do.”

Obviously, he does have probably more strident views on selling out than I certainly do, but I just think I was freed from a lot of those pressures and was able to do the things I love, which is an insanely lucky thing to happen to a person.

I think Charley is afraid of losing his friend, right?

Ultimately, everything comes back to just like, “I like spending time with you and we’re not spending time together and the way we know how to spend time together is by making shows and working, and we haven’t figured out another way of doing it.”

What do you think works about the plot going in reverse, time-wise, Lindsay?

I just think if it played forward, these people would be completely intolerable. Seeing them at their worst and letting the story unfold where they redeem themselves and go back and you see how the friendship got started, I do feel like it does lay out some sort of hope in this cautionary tale.

I think that the telling of it backwards just really allows the audience to take in and love these people and see their pitfalls and understand.

Yes, there’s this idea that we meet them when they’re not at their best.

Mendez: Oh my God, they’re all three horrible.

Radcliffe: Yes, the opening scene is so toxic. I’m glad every night that I’m not in it.

Mendez: That was awful.

Radcliffe: I completely agree with Lindsay. I think it would be really, really hard to take if this story were told in a chronological order. Lindsay mentioned them, but the reverse reveals are some of the most satisfying things to hear every night.

Listening to an audience put things together is just so exciting. I think it’s an interesting device and makes you take things in, in a different way and work maybe a little harder.

Mendez: As actors, it’s been a really interesting exercise for us to do as well. It’s been really challenging too. Also, because these scenes just jump cut, they just end, and then you’re in a different time immediately, and so you have no time to reset or live in a moment, you’re just like, pow! You’re from absolute devastation to complete joy in two seconds. It’s wild.

Daniel, what conversations would you hope someone has after seeing the show, about the show?

I hope it makes them think about friends and about friendship. Definitely like, we have been working on and doing old friends for a couple of days in rehearsal and I was like, “I have an old friend I should call.”

I think it just makes you think about people and time. My personal feeling is that this play is not as sad as everyone thinks, because the implication being that if you — the only way it’s not sad is if everyone is friends until their actual deathbeds. I feel like things can have still a lot of meaning even if they end in a way that’s less than ideal.