“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” returned to Netflix Tuesday with “Kimmy vs. the Reverend,” a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style series finale that allows fans to decide how they want Ellie Kemper’s Kimmy to live happily ever after as you’re faced with the challenge of getting her to the altar on time while saving more kidnapped women from Reverend Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm).
But the first time you watch the interactive special, Daniel Radcliffe — who plays Kimmy’s royal fiancé, Fredrick, in the installment — wants you to play it through as if you’re “the worst human being possible.”
“We shot a lot of dead ends and bad endings,” Radcliffe told TheWrap. “But basically, [creators Robert Carlock and Tina Fey] laid out that they were going to have these paths and they diverge based on what wedding dress you pick for Kimmy. But after that it kind of goes down to the choices you think the characters should make as moral, good people. That’s why I think a perfect way to play it through a couple of times is to play it once as if you are the worst human being possible and want to make us do terrible things and make terrible things happen to us and see how far you get like that. And then play it through once making every kind of moral, model answer. And that should get you to the two main endings.”
Radcliffe added: “The idea the audience will be punished and rerouted when they make the characters do things they know they shouldn’t is such a weird, playful idea. I cannot begin to imagine how you write something like this, unless you had loads of time to think about it. But I’m so glad they did and I got to come in and play around.”
Though Fredrick is a new character that “Kimmy” fans at the beginning of the special, our heroine’s British husband-to-be is meant to be a “worthy” match, as Radcliffe puts it. And given the fact he is quite literally her prince charming — and just as emotionally stunt as she is, having had a very isolated, albeit more luxurious, childhood — they are a perfect fit.
“They are like weirdly linked imaginatively,” Radcliffe told us of Kimmy and Fredrick. “I love the idea that Fredrick is the only other person that can see and talk to Jan the Backpack. They had very, very different upbringings, but there are things about them that make sense.”
And though you may think Fredrick’s claim to the throne is just a big joke, Radcliffe gave us a little lesson in the United Kingdom’s line of succession.
“I was looking it up, because he says he’s 12th in line to the throne and that sounds very distant, but in terms of the line of succession, that’s pretty f–ing close,” Radcliffe told us, laughing. “It’s not like it would happen, but there are people who claim way more distant lineage, people who are like, ‘Oh, I’m 50th in line for the throne!’ So this is actually impressive.”
“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend” launched Tuesday on Netflix.