The fish. So many fish. Sharks and piranhas and conger eels and rare breeds too exotic to name offhand. They all peacefully coexist inside Tracy Morgan’s mansion in Alpine, New Jersey, and they were all on display when the star hosted a cast-and-crew dinner ahead of the production for The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins. “The fish were one of those things where people had mentioned them to me in passing, but I thought they were joking,” Daniel Radcliffe says. “It was actually incredible, and it’s really what you take away from being at his house.”
From Morgan’s perspective, the night was just an opportunity to celebrate the start of a new creative endeavor. “I wanted us to feel like a team and a family,” he says. “And from that dinner, the chemistry was so good that by the time we got to work, we were gelling and having fun and laughing and talking.”
Now their show is poised to ... well, let’s just say it: make a big splash.
NBC’s Reggie Dinkins, premiering February 23 (with the pilot available now on Peacock), chronicles Morgan’s titular disgraced NFL superstar as he stages a comeback. Banned for life from the league after accidentally revealing on live TV that he bet on his own New York Jets games, he hires Radcliffe’s Arthur Tobin to film a documentary about his life in hopes of winning back his fans and maybe even getting into the Hall of Fame. His business manager/agent/ex-wife, Monica (Erika Alexander, Invasion), keeps him in check; his son, Carmelo (Jalyn Hall, All American), admits to taking advantage of him; his fiancée, Brina (Precious Way, Queens), hopes the doc will advance her music career; and his wacky ex-teammate, Rusty (Bobby Moynihan, Saturday Night Live), worships him no matter what.
Tracy Morgan and Jalyn Hall as Reggie and Carmelo
“This is obviously a different show, because it has a family at its center,” says Carlock, who first collaborated with Morgan on Saturday Night Live. “But we are trying to fill it with ours and Tina’s DNA of people dealing with each other in highly comedic ways. And we get Tracy with that lovability combined with a little bit of danger that made him so funny on 30 Rock.”
This series also boasts a British invasion in the form of Radcliffe, the Harry Potter star who notably silly-ed out in TBS’s Miracle Workers and portrayed the titular character in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which earned him an Emmy nomination. Here, his often-flabbergasted director character has had his own embarrassing meltdown and also needs redemption. Still, there’s no disputing that these two are an amusing mismatch. “Tracy and Dan are opposites both in their physicality and personalities,” Means says. “It’s an amazing and hilarious odd couple.”
Though Morgan earned an Emmy nomination during his time on 30 Rock for playing Tracy Jordan — and later earned a second for hosting SNL — he owes a thank you to Michael Jordan. When Carlock and Means were batting around ideas for a new show centered around Morgan, they found inspiration in sports documentaries such as The Last Dance (which focused on the Chicago Bulls) and Beckham. They reasoned that the subjects’ earnest and occasionally defensive self-reflections — usually while looking at clips of their glory days on an iPad — were ripe for the picking.
“It’s fun to play with those tropes and clichés,” Carlock says. Seconds Means, “All these athletes were of a certain age and stature. It made total sense for us.” Reggie Dinkins in particular is loosely based on Pete Rose, the Major League Baseball star who — infamously banned from baseball for betting on his own games — told his story in HBO’s docuseries Charlie Hustle & the Matter of Pete Rose. (He died in 2024, just a couple months after it premiered.)
The premise was also an ideal fit for Morgan, an all-city running back at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in the 1980s. “It was suited just for me,” he says. “So, when they pitched it, I said, ‘Perfect.’ To get back in the saddle with Tina, Sam and Robert, come on. That’s a no-brainer.”
Morgan longed to return to his roots, anyway. With the medium drastically changed since 30 Rock aired its last episode in 2013, “I really wanted people to put down their phones and find a show that everybody could watch together,” he says. “I know TV is not like it used to be.” (Asked about his current viewing habits, Morgan replies in his distinctively unfiltered voice: “I’ve got a zillion channels with nothing to watch!”)
Securing Radcliffe was less of a sure thing. Having worked with him on the 2020 Netflix special Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend (he played Kimmy’s fiancé) and the animated Netflix series Mulligan, Carlock says, “We wrote the part with Dan in mind without knowing what his deal was, because he’s a busy guy. We love working backwards when it comes to talent.” Radcliffe’s version of events: “Robert and Sam were probably confident in me saying yes, and rightfully so. They make me laugh so much. Whenever I would see them, I’d make a point of saying, ‘If there’s anything that ever comes up, send it my way.’”
Precious Way and Bobby Moynihan as Brina and Rusty
Though the two leads had never met, Morgan was all in when Carlock and Means told him Radcliffe was a go. “I was excited,” he says. “My daughters love Harry Potter. So, I said, ‘Of course.’ Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe are from different worlds. That is funny!” For his part, Radcliffe had never heard of 30 Rock until a friend gifted him a DVD box set years ago. After he signed on, a rewatch was in order. “I’m sure I got maybe 1% of the references,” he says.
Radcliffe received his unofficial Morgan initiation via that cast-and-crew dinner at Morgan’s mansion, which also features a screening room and basketball court, he reports. (“That man knows how to have fun with his money.”) Once shooting began at Lionsgate Studios in Yonkers, New York, Radcliffe delighted in seeing Morgan in his comedy element; he marvels at the time his costar arrived on set blasting Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” on a boombox and timed his entrance to the power ballad’s iconic drum solo.
As Morgan explains it, a sense of humor is like a fingerprint, in that “everyone’s is different.” His bigger on-set priority: ensuring that he and Radcliffe were both ready to play. “We’re not all doing one comedy thing in this show,” he says. “Daniel is doing his style; I’m doing my style. And it works.”
Viewers will see the dynamic for themselves, especially as the two characters butt heads in their respective accents. (The producers decided early on that Radcliffe should go native to amp up the bluster.) Still, Carlock points to the fourth episode, in which Reggie and Arthur set off into the woods to find a lost cat. “It’s an entirely futile effort,” he adds, “but the two of them come together.” Echoes Means, “Even though they’re at odds, they both ultimately have the same goal.”
The off-screen contrast really is something to behold. Start with statistics: Morgan is 57 and a native of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood; Radcliffe is 36 and raised in the suburbs of London. Morgan’s first TV acting gig was the recurring part of “Hustle Man” on the ’90s Fox sitcom Martin in his mid-20s; Radcliffe was all of 10 when he appeared in the prestigious 1999 BBC production of David Copperfield. “I remember the crew fishing in the lake next to the house where we were shooting Maggie Smith’s scene,” he says of his first screen credit.
Even their interviews for emmy are a fascinating study in opposites (though both actors are on time to the minute!). Zooming from his apartment in downtown Manhattan, the animated Radcliffe is fastidious and focused with his answers. Morgan, plopped on a couch and surrounded by friends in his New Jersey living room, jumps from topic to topic with abandon. During one pivot, he notes that he and Eddie Murphy talk almost every day. “I bring him back down to Earth,” he says. “He’s in Hollywood, and I’m regular with him. No extra cheese, no pepperoni — just a slice and a Coke.”
The two actors also embarked on their own distinct paths before converging.
To properly tell Morgan’s story, you have to go back to those football-playing days in high school. He dropped out in the 12th grade with just four credits to go because his beloved father, Jimmy — “he had more comedy talent in his pinky than I have in my whole body” — was dying of AIDS. This was 1987. Decades later, he’s understandably emotional in describing the trauma. “That was my daddy,” he says. “I saw him go from 200 pounds to 90 pounds. I watched him cry, and blood came out of his eyes as tears. His nails were falling off.”
In his grieving, Morgan relied on a talent that he first honed in grade school: making people laugh. “My older brother was born with cerebral palsy and [disabled],” he says. “Why do you think I’m so funny? Because the kids in school could be mean, and my brother couldn’t protect me. I had to learn to be funny to keep the bullies off my back.”
He made the stand-up comedy rounds in New York City and was a cast member of the sketch-comedy show Uptown Comedy Club from 1992 to ’94. While working on Martin in 1996, he was asked to audition for SNL. “I wasn’t going to do it, because I was so enamored with Martin,” he says. “But my first wife said, ‘Do you know who took off from Saturday Night Live? Eddie Murphy.’ I said, ‘I’m auditioning.’” He beat Stephen Colbert in the final callback.
The show was seminal in his life — not because of how popular his characters, like Brian Fellow, were but because of whom he met inside Rockefeller Center. “At SNL, the writers weren’t writing for me for my first two years,” he says. “But Tina Fey and Paula Pell said, ‘He’s crazy, but he’s funny. Here, world.’” Then comes the ultimate compliment: “Tina is my sister. If you drop a pebble in the pond, ripples are going to spread across the whole pond. Tina was the pebble.”
Radcliffe, meanwhile, was too young, too British and way too busy to catch Morgan’s SNL run. (It ended in 2003.) Consider: He acted alongside Sir Ian McKellen on his second day of production on David Copperfield and played Pierce Brosnan’s son in the 2001 film The Tailor of Panama — even before he got cast as Harry Potter at age 11. The 10-year, eight-film franchise has grossed well above $7 billion worldwide.
Despite growing up on soundstages of various high-profile projects, Radcliffe says he never let himself be prone to the outbursts seen on Reggie Dinkins. “Thankfully, I’ve never been so irate on a set,” he says. “I’m an actor. I could never find it in myself to get that worked up. I’ve always tried to be really good at just doing my business.”
Erika Alexander and Daniel Radcliffe as Monica and Arthur
Since Harry Potter, Radcliffe has shown off his impressive theatrical chops by starring in West End and Broadway productions of the play Equus as well as the musical revivals of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Merrily We Roll Along (for which he received a 2024 Tony Award). He’s also taken on cinematic thrillers and dramas like The Woman in Black (2012), Kill Your Darlings (2013) and Victor Frankenstein (2015).
But he prefers to keep it light. “I think I always had this humor inside me,” Radcliffe says. While making the Potter films, he says he’d often go back to his dressing room to watch British comedy fare, such as Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge character. And with Miracle Workers and his appearances on Extras, The Simpsons and in the 2016 film Swiss Army Man, in which he plays a flatulent corpse, “I can still surprise people,” he says. “If people didn’t know that I do comedy, it’s nice to show them that I can.”
Radcliffe even hosted SNL in 2012. (One memorable moment was his turn on Weekend Update as Casey Anthony’s recently adopted Yorkshire Terrier.) “It was amazing, terrifying and a whirlwind — and the minute it’s over you want to do it again,” he says. “But I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that being the host is the easiest job. Everyone else is there to make you look good and make sure you have a great time.”
He credits Morgan with upping his comedy game. “He’s pushing me out of my comfort zone,” he says. “There are line readings he can do that are out of reach for 99% of most human beings.” Morgan has been left wowed, too: “He is super talented. I know he is. Come on, it’s Daniel Radcliffe! Daniel loves me, and I love him. In our last life, we were probably cousins or brothers.”
The most surefire sign of their special bond? They’re planning to sit courtside at Madison Square Garden to catch Morgan’s beloved New York Knicks. Raves Morgan, “He knows how I feel about them. He literally said to me, ‘Tracy, if you’re a Knicks fan, I’m a Knicks fan.’”
Every night, Morgan adheres to a TV ritual: He cues up a rerun of The Honeymooners. “I put it on, and Jackie [Gleason] puts me to sleep,” he says. These 70-year-old episodes also tie into his 2026 work with Reggie Dinkins. “Being on TV means you’re seeing somebody who is vulnerable and regular, like Ralph Kramden and Alice. So, I’m going forward by going backward. I’m learning from the OGs!”
Perhaps that’s why everyone is excited about the throwback aspect of a weekly comedy series airing on broadcast television. “It’s comforting in a real way for us to be back at NBC,” Means says. Carlock, who says he just filmed promos for the first time in a decade, jokes, “We’re buying watercoolers for everyone to talk about the show.”
And no doubt those conversations would revolve around how two strangers — both on and off screen — can find common ground, be funny and get along swimmingly.
“The moral of the story is that nothing is done alone,” Radcliffe says. “If you’re going to turn something around and figure out how to live a life, it’s going to be done with the help of the people around you and the people that love you.”
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #1, 2026, under the title "Partners In Prime."
