Fresh Air - Benicio del Toro

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Benicio del Toro is nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in ‘One Battle After Another,’ where he plays a karate sensei who runs what he calls a "Latino Harriet Tubman" operation. He was also in Wes Anderson’s latest film, ‘The Phoenician Scheme.’ He spoke with Tonya Mosley last year.David Bianculli reviews ‘Scarpetta,’ the new Prime Video series starring Nicole Kidman, based on a series of books by Patricia Cornwell, and John Powers reviews the new Netflix series ‘How to Get to Heaven from Belfast,’ by the creator of ‘Derry Girls.’ To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm David B. In Cooley. Benicio del Toro, an actor who has made a career out of playing complex, morally ambiguous characters, is nominated for a best-supporting actor Oscar for his role in the Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another. Del Toro plays Sergio St. Carlos, a karate instructor and leader of an immigrant rescue operation. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Bob Ferguson, a member of a far-left revolutionary group, the French 75. He's burned out and has been living off the grid for 16 years, raising his daughter Willa. Her mother, who also was a revolutionary, fled to Mexico when Willa was a baby. Let's listen to a clip from the film. In this scene, Benicio del Toro as Sergio is in his karate studio when he gets a call, warning him that the authorities are coming after the migrants hiding in the building where he lives.

While on the phone, he gets a knock at the door. It's Bob. He's trying to contact his daughter who's in danger. Hang on a second. Yeah, I've got to help you. Bob. Bob? Briggs. Yeah. I need your help, sense. I need your help, man. He's still there? What time I get off for? I'm coming. Call Maricella and tell her I'm on my way. Where are you?

Where are you? I'm basically in the car. We should move them. Yes. I'm going to call this bronze and I'll call you back, okay? Okay. Bye. Bob, we gotta go.

I need a weapon, man. All you got is damn nun trucks. You know I can get a gun. What? What's going on? MKU. MKU, man. They're everywhere right now.

Everywhere right now. MKU, MKU, what? Well, bust it open my door. They're coming after me and Willa right now. Right now. That's heavy metal, bro. Yeah. Hey, where is she?

I don't know. I gotta charge my phone to find out. Here, use my phone. Can't, I can't. They'll trace that phone. I gotta use my phone. Let's do that at my place. We gotta go.

Your place? Yeah. You got a gun in your place? I'll get you a gun. You have a gun, right? Okay. Yes. Right now, it's a goddamn roundup.

up. I got to deal with this. Okay. Yeah. I just take that to go. Let's go to your place. Let's go to your place. I'll charge my phone. You got a gun there. Bob, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, go. Get off that's a tummy. Okay? Listen, breathe. All right. Okay. Cool out. Ocean waves.

Ocean waves. Let's go. Let's go. I'll follow you. Come on. In the year 2000, Benicio del Toro received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in traffic. roll in traffic. In that movie, he portrayed a Mexican police officer forced to decide whether to uphold justice or compromise his ethics in a corrupt system. In this iconic scene, he meets up with United States DEA agents. They want information about his new boss, a corrupt drug pin. Del Toro's character is nervous when he meets up with the agents in a car at a parking garage. So he suggests they change locations and have the meeting in a public place, a hotel's swimming pool.

I believe it's important that we work together, Mexico and the United States, one hand, twice in the other. We agree. So maybe you can tell me about your informants in our operations. We thought that maybe you'd have that kind of information for us. This is a very different proposition, my friend. We pay for that kind of information. Is that what you're talking about, Javier?

Getting paid? You like baseball? Guadro. When he likes for the parks, so kids can play at night, so it's safe, so they can play baseball, so they don't become burros for los malones.

Everybody like baseball, everybody likes parks. Listen, I believe it's important that the United States they can interest in Tijuana now. That's what I'm talking about, my friends. Del Toro's breakout role in 1995 was as a small-time crook in the usual suspects. He went on to play the drug-fueled lawyer Dr. Gonzo, starring alongside Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

And he won Best Actor at Cannes for his role as Che Guevarvarer, in Che. His other films include Basquiat and 21 grams, and he starred in the Showtime series, Escape from Donamora. Last year, Del Toro starred in the Wes Anderson film The Phoenician scheme. He played Jaja Corda, a charismatic but morally complicated tycoon of the 1950s, who, after surviving an assassination attempt, tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter, a novice nun played by Mia Threpleton. This is the second Wes Anderson film for Del Toro. In 2021, he starred as a volatile, imprisoned artist in the French Dispatch.

We're going to listen to Tanya Mosley's interview with Benicio del Toro from last year. She asked him about the Phoenician scheme. You know, I read that Wes Anderson wrote this character with you and mine. You are essentially in every shot. And I want to give the audience a taste of your character. As I mentioned, his name is Jaja Corda, and he's this powerful industrialist from the 1950s, whose conscience is kind of awakened by his relationship with his estranged daughter. And in this scene, I'm about to play, the two of them are on Corda's private plane alongside Michael, Sarah, the family tutor.

Let's listen. We're starting our descent. Prepare your documents before we deplane, so you never delay my schedule. passports. Where's yours? I don't have a passport. Normal people want the basic human rights that accompany citizenship in any sovereign nation. I don't. My legal residence is a shack in Portugal. My official domicile is a hut on the Black Sea. My certificated abode is a lodge perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sub-Saharan ring force accessible only by goat bath. I don't live anywhere. I'm not a citizen at all. I don't know. I don't know.

need my human rights. That was my guest today, Benicio del Toro, and the new West Anderson film The Phoenician scheme. And Benicio, that line, I'm a man who does not need his human rights. What a line. It is a great line. How would you describe this man, this character that you inhabit it? Ruthless businessman, a tycoon, a rascal, who is looking for redemption.

whether he knows it or not. He's a character under reconstruction in a way. So that's the beginning of the character, and the character has an arc, and wherever he starts in the movie, he will end up in a complete different place. And, you know, he's faced with mortality. He starts to look at his life in a different way,

and because of the help of his daughter, like you said earlier, his daughter helps him put him in track and perhaps awaken his consciousness. You and Wes Anderson actually collaborated on this, and I was thinking about what it actually means to have a director

write a role tailor-made for you. Like, is there something about the moral dilemmas your character is dealing with? that Wes Anderson felt only you could draw out. You know, Wes is a great director, and we know him as a director, and we know his films. But really, he is maybe a better writer. And what I meant by that is, like,

I think actors look for characters that are layered, and by that I mean may contradict themselves. They break the stereotype. put it that way, if they contradict themselves. And then, you know, when you get a character that has an arc, like Zaja in the Phoenician scheme, has a hell of an arc, then as an actor, you're doing interpretations, right? So now you're almost in the cockpit of the character and of the story.

You're part of this of what's happening, and you're looking at the arc and you're making sure that it, that is believable where the character is going to end up. So it's a real rich character to tackle. So much is said about Wes Anderson's aesthetic. I think the description you gave was it's like being in a pop-up book. I mean, he works with an incredible art director, Adam Stockhausen. He's worked with Wes, I think, most of his films.

and they collaborate amazingly, and these things come to life, and it's like you're in fantasy land, but you're in real fantasy land. What was it like for you as an actor being in sort of like a real pop-up book? Because when you're performing, of course, they're all different types of sets,

but, I mean, this is very, very different, almost maybe the complete opposite of maybe a big franchise film with CGI and visual effects. You're actually in it, Everything around you is real. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, West doesn't use CGI that much. I don't think so. I think very little, really. But the first thing you're trained to, if you do film, you train yourself, is to erase the camera. It's not there. And when you find yourself in the moment and you're acting, the set will not get in the way.

You know, the camera is not going to get in the way. What does happen in a Wes Anderson film is when you walk in, the set will embrace you to really feel that you are in this room, in this dining room, in this airplane. And the details are, makes it really exciting. But when it comes to, when they say action, you just got to be in the moment. And usually being in the moment means you take everything around you for granted, you know.

So it's a combination, you know. But the fact is that when you walk on the set, and there were many sets on this film, it was one, wow, after another. You mentioned Mia Threpleton, who plays your daughter. And really, your relationship is the core of this entire film and watching as you. you mentioned, the evolution of you and kind of your redemption arc. You tell this story about her, auditioning for the role, that there was something in her eyes. It was something about her eyes that made you feel that your character needed those eyes, that look. Can you elaborate on that? Well, you know, yes, I think Wes had her in mind already because we only audition her.

I was in London and we did a reading and then we started playing a little bit and there was a moment there in between scenes. We were doing a scene and then just when we finished I kept my eyes on her eyes and she kept her eyes on my eyes and we kind of looked at each other and no one blinked.

And it was, and it was, It was pretty amazing to see such a young actress, you know, just hold her instrument, you know, just everything, just there. And just kind of like she was just looking at me and didn't blink. And I remember telling West, like, you know, I think that's what Zaja needs. He needs a strong support if he's going to become a better person. You had this relatively small role, and it was at the beginning of the film. You played Fred Finster. He was this small-time crook and con man, rounded up like with a bunch of other guys.

And you made this choice. It wasn't called for in the script to give this character a mumbling accent. And I want us to take a listen of this because in this scene, you've just gone through this lineup with several other guys, and you're now in a holding cell. And your character is complaining. Let's listen. So I did little time. Is that mean I get railed every time a truck finance? Finster, were you relaxed?

These guys don't have any probable cause. You know, right, no PC, now that's right. You do some time, never let you go. You know, it treat me like a criminal. I end up a criminal. You are a criminal. And what, you got to go and do that? Trying to make a point.

That was my guest today, Benicio del Toro in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects. Benicio, you chose this accent to make him memorable because he was actually one of the first to die, I think. It's what a bold choice for a young actor. You know, it was a decision made between the director of myself because it's correct. I died on page 37 out of like 98 pages. So I did propose to Brian Singer and the writer Chris McCoy if I could just create something out of it. And they trusted me. That was the win there when they trusted me because now I just had to deliver it.

Where did you get the accent from? I got it from many different influences. Joe Frazier, the boxer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The loniest monk. Yeah, yeah. And I would play with it, you know. The fact is that the movie became a huge success.

And you're only as good as your movie in a way, you know. I think that the fact is that that movie helped my career quite a bit. and the part, but the fact is that there was a great ensemble on that film, and the movie was a huge success. At the box office, it was very independent. We shot it in 21 days or 20 days, and it was, you know, it's just like, it's a sign of, like, you're only as good as your movie. I mean, I think if that movie would have not been a success the way it was, we might not be talking about that, my character in it. I want to go back, way back to some of those early days when you were an aspiring actor, moving into some of your early roles.

So I know earlier in your career, you studied with Stella Adler, who she is famously known for teaching Marlon Brando and James Dean, what became known as method acting. And I know there's so much there, Benicio, but what do you remember the most about that experience of being in her class? and learning from her? It changed my life, studying with her at her studio. I studied under several teachers, one whose name was Arthur Mendoza in Los Angeles,

and she would come for summer and winter and teach, and I remember taking those classes, and it was legendary. But I think one of the things that she was really, really particular was the fact that the actor needs to understand what the writer is trying to say. So you need to improve your reading comprehension. Also, the other thing that was exciting about the class was the fact that it was a serious job.

An actor is as important as a doctor. Had you gone into the class believing that? Well, I never really thought about it, really, to be honest with you. I don't come from a family of theater. I did watch movies when I was younger than like anybody else, but I never thought about what was behind it. And acting was looked at as, you know, not really a profession. That's something that you would consider a real profession.

in my world as I was growing up, you know, profession would be being an architect, being a lawyer, being a doctor, being a dentist. Right, because your family were professional people, right, in Puerto Rico where you were born and raised. Yes. Yes. Many of my family members were lawyers and my godmother who, I lost my mom when I was nine. She was the one who stepped in, you know, kind of like helped a lot, you know, and she was a lawyer. as well. So, yeah, so, but acting was like a hobby. You know, you don't turn that into a profession. So when going into Stella for me was like, it is as important as any other profession that we consider important. There was a respect for the craft. It made it exciting for me. It made me feel proud. She also told you something like, go to the lines last. So don't go to the lines before you understand who the character is.

I just thought that was interesting, too. Yeah. She told every actor, don't go to the lines right away, because it's crucial that you need to understand why that character, that person, wants. You need to understand where that character, you know, is coming from, where it's going. And so the first way to understand it is just put yourself in that person's shoe. And then from then on, you can then build and create a character that maybe eventually doesn't resemble you. But there might be actors who go to the words first and it might work.

But her logic was that if you go to the words first and you're concentrating just on the words, And you're not going into the psychological aspect of who that person is. Benicio del Toro speaking with Tanya Mosley last year. After a break, we'll continue their conversation. And we have two TV reviews. I'll review the new Nicole Kidman series, Scarpetta, based on the novels by Patricia Cornwell. And critic at large John Powers reviews the Netflix series,

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. I'm David B. and Cooley, and this is fresh air. You mentioned your mom passing when you were nine, and I've actually heard you say that really from a very young age, you were thinking about mortality because at that young age, you guys knew that she was dying. It's a powerful lesson for a young child to be faced with and to know and have to learn and understand.

I don't know if you ever really. really understand it, really, you know? I mean, it just marks you forever. It's just part of who you are. I don't know if you really get over it. I had an interesting meeting with a Japanese filmmaker. His name is Kaneto Shindo. And he was, I met him, he was about 97 years old. And in our conversation, he lost his mom when he was nine, just like me. and that when he was 72, he made a movie about his mother. And I asked him that after making that movie, did anything change regarding that loss? And he said, nothing. And, you know, basically what I'm saying is like, you never get over it.

You know, it's just what it is. It's just what it is. Was it your brother who kind of planted that seed in you that maybe you could be an actor? He did mention something like that. And, you know, I don't know why. He saw the ham in me, I don't know, I guess. Yeah, he did mention it at some point. But it was really strange because it was like, where did that come from?

And, you know, I never did any acting. How I fell into acting was like, this. I went to San Diego, University of California, San Diego, my freshman year, and you could make your own schedule. And I decided, wow, I can make it really easy for me. You know, I could just hang around and ride a bike around and just hang about, you know. And I, there was an acting classes, I think it was called Acting 101, just like that. And I said, how can I fail that? And if there's homework, it's going to be watching movies, which I already do. So it looked pretty easy to me.

So I went in, and the teacher said that everyone here is 18 years old or 19, and that's the right age to study acting, because you have a little bit of an understanding already about life. And so this is the right age to study it. And that clicked. That was kind of like, I still remember it. And the feeling was like there's a logic to this, there's a science to this, and also the fact like, am I on time?

I thought if you were an actor, you had to be born into acting. And just like a musician, you need to start playing when you're like eight or nine. You need to start, you need to come from a family of musicians, you know, or you need to come from a family of theater. people and actors, and it was kind of strange that it was like, hey, this is the right time to start. And I took the class, and then I started realizing that there was a logic to it. You can study it, and you can get better. You mentioned your godmother, Sarah Torres, Peralta. She was also your mom's really good friend.

She's the big reason that you came from Puerto Rico here to the states to go to private boarding school in Pennsylvania. Yes. How different was Pennsylvania from your life in Puerto Rico? I went into a controlled environment to an extent. I went to a private school, a boarding school. And what I do remember is suddenly I was alone. But the person to my left or to my right were alone too.

So there was like this beginning that was very healthy for new thoughts. There were no cliques. I made friends with the basketball players because I played basketball. But for the most part, everybody was an equal footing. And also, you would find yourself alone. which is also healthy. I think in Puerto Rico I had my posse, my friends, and I was never alone, you know.

And here in Pennsylvania for the first time, it was like, and you start looking in and you start having different thoughts and new ideas might come in, and it was healthy that way. And I quickly made friends, and, you know, I made a lot of friends. and played basketball and made a lot of friends there.

I had, you know, I spoke English before I went to the school, but I had a thick accent. But playing basketball created a language right there, and I think music also. You have the ability to kind of transform and be ambiguous ethnically. and it seems to work in your favor, but has it always worked in your favor? You know, it's interesting because the first time I ever acted in Spanish was in traffic.

I mean, I did say lines in Spanish in Basquiat, and I might have said something in Spanish in a James Bond movie I did called License to Kill when I was 20. But for the most part, you know, the whole ethnic thing was not out until I did traffic, and suddenly the ethnic thing, the Hispanic, helped me, create a character, and help my career, and change my career, really.

And it was traffic. So it's funny because, you know, when I was going out for movies early on, I would be asked to change my name because I would be limited. It was an issue that you would be limited to play Latino roles, right? Yes. And so you went against it because you'd be limited to stereotypes. And at some point, I said, bring it on because I do believe everyone is different.

And I will play every Latino different if I have to play Latino for the rest of my life. In a way, like, I just had a breakthrough in what you were saying here about this because one of the things Hollywood has been kind of known for is flattening identities or culture. I mean, my approach was, it's always been like, hey, you know, You play the character. I think now it's changed a little bit. You know, your heritage is embraced. And more so now, I think there's more opportunity. We're not out of the bag for, let's say,

for Latino actors and actresses to get roles that it means something, that are, you know, three-dimensional and not stereotypes. But there's more opportunity now than when I started. That's for sure. And I think that, you know, it's a good thing. Still, there should be more. And it's a complicated thing because it's not up to the actors. It's really, it's got to start with the writing.

Then the writing and then the idea that it will attract eyeballs and ears to come and watch these stories. So it's interesting and it is, it's better now than ever, and there's a lot of, you know, Latino actors working out there and, you know, probably more than there were when I first started, you know, tons more, yeah. Benicio del Toro, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you for having me. Benicio del Toro speaking to Tanya Mosley last year.

He's nominated for a best-supporting actor Oscar for his role in one battle after another. The Academy Awards are scheduled to be held Sunday and televised by ABC. Coming up, I review Nicole Kidman's newest TV project, Scarpetta, the Prime Video Series based on the series of novels by Patricia Cornwell. This is Fresh Air. Nicole Kidman is an executive producer of, as well, as well as the main star of, Scarpetta, the new eight-part mystery series now streaming in its entirety on Prime Video. She plays Virginia Medical Examiner K. Scarpeta. But in this ambitiously

structured drama, Kidman isn't the only one playing her. This narrative unfolds as two different mysteries from two different timelines and shifts between them like cards being shuffled in a deck. One timeline, in the present, has Kidman as Kay, return. turning to her old job after a long time off and instantly faced with a baffling set of murders. The other timeline, from decades earlier in 1998, shows a younger Kay taking the job as chief medical examiner for the first time, and being hit with a serial murder case then, too. In these scenes from the past, Kay is played by a different actress, Rosie McEwen, who matches Kidman's mannerisms and demeanor perfectly.

It's a high-wire balancing act, also required of almost all the other young actors who managed a mirror their more mature counterparts convincingly and entertainingly. And that's not an easy task because the actors in the current timeline are major players, delivering excellent, wide-ranging performances. Jamie Lee Curtis plays Kay's flamboyant sister Dorothy, author of a popular series of children's books. Bobby Canna Valley plays plain-speaking, quick-tempered homicide detective Pete Marino, and Simon Baker plays cerebral FBI profiler, Benton Wesley. All of these movie stars have done exceptionally well on television. Baker on The Mentalist, Canna Valley on Boardwalk Empire, Jamie Lee Curtis on the Bear, and Nicole Kidman in a string of small-screen triumphs,

including Nine Perfect Strangers, The Perfect Couple, and Big Little Lies. When Nicole and Jamie Lee share the screen, which is often, it's incendiary. As youngsters, Kay witnessed their father's death during a robbery, one of many differences between the two sisters. We will literally fight about anything, anything. A song from our childhood? Because fighting is the idioma, the language of siblings. We could try and not be so threatened by each other.

I am not threatened. And forget it. But you, no, listen, I couldn't do your day. Not one day. Not one day. No, no, no, no, no, you win. Just the thought of being in proximity of a dead body. It just, it would destroy my brain space.

Maybe if I hadn't seen death at such a young age, I would have had some broader career choices. Just maybe. Scarpetta is based on a series of novels by best-selling author Patricia Cornwell, who's written 29 stories to date built around Kay Scarpetta. The modern parts of this first-season story, a follow-up second season already has been ordered, are inspired by autopsy, the 25th book in her series. The murder mystery set in the past is from Cornwell's very first Scarpetta novel, Postmortem, from 1990.

Liz Sarnoff, the writer-producer who developed this for television, combines them both in a format that demands close attention but rewards it too. Sarnoff, working with a pool of directors and other writers, delivers solid mysteries in both storylines, as well as an intriguing sumplot involving emotional dependence on an AI-generated personality. But it's the characters, not the clues, that makes Scarpetta so captivating. The veteran actors are rock-solid.

Bobby Cannavalley especially is terrific. And so are their younger counterparts. In one bit of very effective casting, the younger version of Canna Valley's detective, Pete Marino, is played by the actor's own son, Jake. Here he is, in a scene where the younger Kay, played by Rosie McEwen, interrupts homicide detective Pete and the younger FBI profiler Benton, played by Hunter Parrish.

They're discussing the profile of their suspected killer, and Pete is a lot less enamored of all the hypotheticals than his colleagues. You guys always fight like this? Yes. Vicar jokes a bureau profiler with a homicide detective. Yeah, so we can learn about serial killers and psychotwital, and they can get tougher, funnier, and handsomer. How does Lori Peterson affect your profile?

This guy, someone you might not look at twice. Well-functioning. Probably has some type of menial job, a construction worker. Like an all-average, all-American Joe? Labor-related occupation, I suppose. But above average in intelligence. No, shocking. No, the best part for him is the antecedent phase, the fantasy plan, right after he becomes aware of her when he's fueled by obsession.

Yeah, my sense is he's a sadist. I realize this whole series' structure sounds complicated, and it is. But it's rewarding, too. I've seen all eight episodes, and the plots and the characters really hold up. And I haven't even mentioned Ariana Dubose, another major name in this production, who plays the daughter of Jamie Lee Curtis's Doris' Dorothy. or Amanda Rigetti, who plays Dorothy in the flashback scenes. There's a lot to applaud here and a lot to absorb. And the way Prime Video is streaming it, you can gobble it up as fast as you can to help keep things straight, just like a good novel.

Or two good novels. You've been a messing where you shouldn't have been a messing. And now someone else is your best. These boots are made. Coming up what they'll do these days, these boots are gonna walk all. These boots are gonna walk all. Coming up, Critic at Large John Powers reviews the Netflix series How to Get to Heaven from Belfast by the creator of the Dairy Girls.

This is Fresh Air. The Netflix series How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is a comic mystery about three longtime friends investigating the death of another mutual old friend. The show was created by Lisa McGee, who brought us the cult hit Dairy Girls. Our critic at large, John Powers, says he was a bit slow getting to the series, which dropped last month, but he found it such rollicking fun that he simply had to praise it. When I first discovered stories as a kid, I was in love with plot.

I was thrilled by the way that everything could slide so neatly into place. But as I watched and read more, the thrill. begin to vanish. Plots began to feel like freeways. Great for moving you long efficiently, but all pretty much the same. And in truth, you can't see much of life from there. You're better off on the streets, back roads, and alleyways. Someone who grasps this is Lisa McGee, the Northern Irish screenwriter who had an international hit with Dairy Girls, a beloved teen comedy series set during the violent troubles of the late 90s. This time out, McGee has turned her unruly sensibility to a crime show.

The result, Netflix's How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, is a madcap riff on the murder mystery. Vastly entertaining and flagrantly Irish, the show serves up so many different tones that it's like watching one of those performers who can juggle a chainsaw, a puppy, and a bowl of jello, while playing a banjo with their teeth. The story centers on three late-30s Belfast women who've been friends since going to Catholic school together.

There's Sircia, played by Roshin Gallagher, a tireless fantasist who created a hit cop show that even she thinks is stupid. There's Robin, that's Sheneid Keenan, a bossy foul-mouth bourgeois mother of three. Imagine an Irish Weiss Witherspoon. And there's Dara, played by Keelan Dunn, a lovelorn lesbian who might say, seem like a drip. She's stuck caring for her mom, except that Dunn gives her the quiet drollery of a Buster Keaton or Stan Laurel. The three hear about the death of their estranged school friend Greta, with whom they have long shared a dark, potentially ruinous secret. And so they head down to scenic county Donegal to pay their respects. But they quickly realize there's something

suspicious about Greta's death. At search's urging, she writes crime shows after all, they begin to dig. Naturally, trouble follows. Soon they're dealing with everyone from Booker. She's an enigmatically murderous outlaw. To Liam, a member of the Irish Guarda, or police, who they fear will learn their secret. Now, I worry this description may make the show

sound like a cozily routine murder mystery. It's anything but. As the show leaps between past and present, our heroines rocket from one loony scene to the next. next. They see ghosts. They have car crashes. Yes, more than one. They find themselves in funerals, five-star Portuguese resorts, abandoned lighthouses, yachts, golf carts, jails, religious processions, country and western nights at a pub where women dress as Dali Parton. Not to mention a St. Patrick's Day parade, bursting with the screwball exuberance of a Preston Sturgis movie.

Here, fleeing the menacing Booker, they hide in a line of people queuing up to see the Irish equivalent of the Tonight Show. Sircia doesn't want to go in, but Robin explains why they have to, then bluffs the woman who's taking the tickets. She can't kill us on live TV. Okay, can you guys move aside, please? We don't have tickets because these are the competition members.

What are you talking about? She'll be on your list. Jesus, I emailed about this yesterday. What list are you working from? Who about you in the door? Kara. Oh, typical. Hi.

Well, tell me that you at least have some house seats back. Yeah, of course, always. Right, so. Shall we? Mm. Tickets. Seen a lot of 30 well.

The opening episodes of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast are so gleefully freewheeling that it's a tad disappointing when later on it serves up some obligatory crime show stuff. You know, explaining the murder, drawing a moral, etc. The show is at its best when it's most anarchic. Luckily, McGee is less interested in the creaky mechanisms of mystery plotting

than in conjuring up a giddly, surreal world, one that wed some of David Lynch's sense of teenage darkness to an anticomac style akin to the Marx brothers. The show is teeming with garrulous Irish folk whose crazy dialogue just sings. None more so than Robin, nifty played by Keenan, a buzzing beehive of a woman who fires off obscene and blasphemous lines like a rapper. The glue that holds all the lunacy together is the decade's old friendship of its heroines.

Here are women who know how to annoy, wound, and manipulate each other. They bicker hilariously. Although they've grown up and gone their separate ways, they're still living out feelings and experiences they shared back when they were teens in their school uniforms. a period to which the show keeps flashing back. We see the adult Sircia, Robin, and Dara in their younger selves, each living out a destiny that feels almost preordained,

both in its trajectory and its frustrations. With devoutly unsentimental Irish good cheer, McGee reminds us that they carry the past with them always. John Powers reviewed the Netflix series How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. On Monday's show, a new book about Stephen Sondheim draws on archives and letters that offer new insights into his music, his relationship with his collaborators, and his often toxic relationship with his mother, including the letter she wrote to him that's known to Sondheim fans as The Letter. We'll talk with the author, Daniel O'Krent. Join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash This is Fresh Air. We're rolling out new videos with in-studio guests, behind-the-scenes shorts, and iconic interviews from the archive. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorak. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Adam Stanis Sheffsman. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Valonado, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Oneid Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yacundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler.

Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nestor. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. Incou.