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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Anne-Marie Baldonado, sitting in for Terry Gross, who's homesick today. Our guest is award-winning actor, writer, and director Will Sharp. You may have first encountered him in the second season of The White Lotus, where he played Ethan, a newly wealthy tech founder whose marriage may be unraveling.
For that role, he received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama. But Sharp had been noticed for his work already. He's been nominated for numerous BAFTAs, that's the UK equivalent of the Oscars and Emmys, for writing and creating shows like Flowers, a comedy about a family struggling with depression, grief, and loneliness.
He received a BAFTA for acting in the BBC Netflix series Jiri Haji. More recently, he's appeared in Lena Dunham's series Too Much and the Oscar-winning film A Real Pain. Now he stars as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in a new limited series, Amadeus, adapted from the 1979 stage play. The play was also the basis of the 1984 film.
It tells a fictionalized story of the rivalry between Mozart and the court composer Antonio Salieri, who's played by Paul Bettany. Salieri becomes increasingly consumed by envy after realizing Mozart possesses the musical brilliance Salieri desperately prays for but can never attain. Here's a scene from the beginning of the series.
25-year-old Mozart has arrived in Vienna, hoping to build his reputation by composing operas and performing for the emperor's court. He meets Salieri at a court celebration. Salieri, a fan of Mozart's work, is shocked to find that Mozart is immature and irreverent, not a pious genius like his work would suggest. Here's Mozart introducing himself.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Antonio Salieri. The court composer? Yes. This is incredibly fortuitous. The whole reason why I came to Vienna was to write for the Imperial Opera.
Well, there's a process to all of that. I wouldn't go a bit tight.
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Chapter 2: What inspired Will Sharpe to portray Mozart in 'Amadeus'?
You must at least be able to get me one meeting with the Emperor. He's a very busy man. What could be more important than this? Than meeting you. Well, I believe he's currently drawing up plans to ensure our nation's claim on the Kingdom of Bavaria. I suppose that might be taking up some of his time. Please. Just one meeting. I'll be forever in your debt, obviously.
Will Sharp, welcome to Fresh Air.
Hello. Thanks for having me.
What was it about this story that made you want to be part of it?
I guess there was something exciting in our very early conversations about the project of the possibility, because the shape of this is a five-hour limited series, that there's a little bit more space perhaps to sit with Amadeus and also sit with Constanza, his wife, and kind of see it from their point of view.
And I guess I was interested by this idea of apocryphally, certainly in the story of Amadeus, There's this sense that Mozart was someone for whom like music just fell out of the sky into his lap. But I was sort of curious to sort of try and imagine that. But what does that actually look and feel like in his day to day life? And to try and sort of humanize that somehow.
I mean, the music does come to him, but it takes a toll like there's a burden to it.
Yeah, I mean, I guess Paul and I would often sort of talk about... Paul Bettany, who played Salieri. That's right, yeah. We would often talk about the story, I guess, in trying to understand it in kind of like grounded terms or sort of playable terms. We'd often think of it as two brothers to a common father in God.
And Salieri feels neglected by God and that Mozart is getting all of the attention and is having music showered upon him in spite of him being so much less pious than Salieri, who sort of like... immaculately behaved and feels like in spite of that, he's not getting what he needs from God. He's not getting the attention he needs.
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Chapter 3: How did Will Sharpe prepare for his role as Mozart?
I've said this before as well, but I've weirdly, because I enjoyed creative writing exercises and had by that age, maybe started to feel like, oh, if there's like a poetry homework assignment, I seem to get good feedback on that. I sort of had found a confidence in writing.
And so I felt like, weirdly, there was something quite empowering about being able to write the language, feeling sort of like I could write it well and was confident writing it. And that was a way of almost like grounding myself in the country a little bit, even if I felt like socially I didn't quite know how to communicate.
Was writing kind of your first love? Like, is that the thing that you thought you were going to do?
I don't know if I ever felt like it was possible to pursue it as a vocation because my parents do not come from creative backgrounds and I was never really anywhere near that world. You know, my dad was really into books and I could tell that I enjoyed it. I didn't really have a sense that acting or comedy was a thing until quite a bit later, I think, at school, in my teens, maybe.
And I think I remember having some sort of version of a conversation with my mum where I was like, I don't really understand... big deal with acting? Isn't it just sort of pretending? And she was like, we'll do it then. And I was like, okay.
So when do you think you really decided that it was going to be acting or being in entertainment, that that was what you wanted to do? Was it when you were in high school and boarding school? Or was it when you got to college at Cambridge?
I think at school I really didn't have a sense that it was possible. And, you know, had an interest in it and wrote a play and some sort of slightly embarrassingly Rushmore-esque kind of moments. But, like, maybe towards the end of university you would see some people going on to... doing it as professionally and that made it feel like maybe it's possible.
I mean, maybe, to be honest with you, probably when Tom Kingsley and I, we made a short film. He was working as a runner at an advertising agency and I was playing a junior doctor in a soap, in a sort of continuing medical drama.
So this was after you had both graduated from Cambridge and you were kind of collaborators. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What themes does 'Amadeus' explore through Mozart's character?
Are they haunted?
No.
Well, then why do they call them ghost peppers?
Because they're really hot.
But most ghosts aren't known for being hot. If you could be anything in the world that you wanted to be, what would you be?
I want to be a vet.
You don't mean a veteran, you mean a veterinarian.
Yeah. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: How does Will Sharpe relate to Mozart's struggles with social norms?
Probably somebody who works in a show.
Works in a show?
Yeah.
Oh, like show business stuff.
Yeah, like, have you ever seen Schoolwork?
Who's that with?
Jack Black.
Never heard of that guy.
He's one of my favorite actors. Good for him. No, my first favorite is Ryan Reynolds.
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