Why Daniel Radcliffe Is Really 'Worried' About America

In his 2016 movie "Imperium," Radcliffe played an FBI agent who infiltrates a gang of white supremacists, which to Radcliffe's admitted dismay, is not so far-fetched from today's reality.

"I, like most people, am particularly spellbound by what's going on in the U.S." the actor told The Daily Beast in a recent interview. "It's sad, and it makes me worried."

"This level of division is not just going to go away when Trump goes," he continued. "It's something frighteningly, deeply ingrained. I hope it can just dissipate, but I don't know. Any exposure to Twitter and YouTube comments and you go, 'Oh my God!' It's so hard to see these people feel less strongly about these things than they feel right now."

Radcliffe filmed "Imperium" in rural Virginia back in September 2015, just about two years before the violent white supremacy protests occurred in Charlottesville.

"It's been disturbing," he said of the neo-Nazi march. "When we were filming the KKK rally scenes in that film, we did have some people think we were a real rally. There were some rightly pissed off African-American people, and we'd all rush over to them and be like, 'No, no! It's only a film!' and were the most apologetic group of fake skinheads in the world at that moment. But we also had people drive by in trucks and honk their horns thinking we were a real rally, and it was appalling."

"It was a really weird thing to experience because we were making a film about white supremacy, so we didn't think it had all gone away, but when it was that sort of casual, that was the thing that has been shocking," he added. "When we were making the film, we thought, 'This is way more prevalent than people think, but it's still on the fringes,' and then to watch it become treated as a 'legitimate' political point of view in some quarters because of how elevated some of its voices have become, it's crazy."

One aspect of our current social climate the actor can get behind, though, is the #MeToo movement, saying that there's "no place" for anything from blatant sexual harassment to "low-key, on-set weirdness."

"There's something happening which I think is really, really good, where people and audiences are caring about the people who make these things, and what ethical or moral code they live by," he said. "I don't know if it's happening because of social media, or because we know so much more about everyone now, but I do think people are going to have to start thinking about that, and hopefully it will make people think about their behavior."

"The meaty thing is about sexual harassment, as it should be, and that should be stamped out and wiped out of our industry -- from the awful Harvey Weinstein stuff to the low-key, on-set weirdness -- all of that is just crazy, and needs to go, and there's no place for it," he added. "But there's no place for a lot of the behavior of people in my industry."