Fresh Air - Best Of: Boots Riley / Will Sharpe

Episode Date: May 16, 2026

Boots Riley talks about his new film, ‘I Love Boosters.' It stars Keke Palmer as the leader of a crew of women shoplifters who steal from luxury stores and sell the goods cheap to people who can't afford retail. Riley says he thinks of his work labor organizing, filmmaking and writing hip-hop music as the same project. Also, we’ll hear from actor Will Sharpe. He starred in season two of ‘The White Lotus,’ Lena Dunham’s series ‘Too Much,’ and the movie ‘A Real Pain.’ Now he plays Mozart in a new adaptation of ‘Amadeus.’ TV critic David Bianculli reviews a new special by David Attenborough.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From W. H.Y.Y.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today, Boots Riley. His new film is called I Love Boosters, and it stars Kiki Palmer as the leader of a crew of women's shoplifters who steal from luxury stores and sell the goods cheap to people who can't afford retail. 20 years before the film, Riley wrote a song by the same name with his hip-hop group The Coo. The song is a love letter to shoplifters or boosters as they're called, which he says he knows a thing or two about. Well, I have been a broke rapper for a long time having to stay fly. You know, it's just a job requirement. Also, we'll hear from actor Will Sharp. He starred in Lena Dunham's series Too Much and the film A Real Pain. And now he stars as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in a new adaptation of Amadeus. And David B. and Cooley reviews a new special by David Attenborough. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today is filmmaker, rapper, and community organizer, Boots Riley. His work for the last few decades has circled the same argument. That capitalism produces the contradictions we live with and that art can make them visible. He made that argument as the frontman of the Oakland-based hip-hop group The Coo. And in his screenwork with his 2018 film, Sorry to Bother You, a surreal satire about a black telemarketer who finds a success after he learns to use his white voice. And he's making the argument again in his latest film, I Love Boosters, which was first a love song he wrote 20 years ago about shoplifters, or Boosters, as they're called. A booster is a person who jacks from the retail and sells it in the hood for dirt cheap, resell. In these hard times, they press on like lean nails. And all of my experience, that sex has been beam up. Back in elementary, my shoes used to rap. Every time my soaps hit the street that would flap. Then in high school, Lankton, and a

I love a cap because my jacket didn't have a brand name in the back of years. Later this lady took me to her apartment. It looked like the Macy's sportswear department. Clothes on the chairs on the couch and the carpet. A 20 had me icy like in the Arctic. If it wasn't for the hard work of a booster, most couldn't go to the

clubs that were used to. If you don't get the dress code they'll boot you like people who get dressed up won't shoot. I love Boosters the film stars Kiki Palmer as the leader of a crew of women's shoplifters in the Bay Area who steal from luxury fashion stores and sell the goods cheap to people who can't afford retail. Demi Moore plays the fashion designer

who stores their robbing from, and Lakeith Stanfield plays a figure who threatens the whole operation. As you heard, before Riley made films, he made music. The coup released their first album Kill My Landlord in 1993. Before that, he was a labor and community organizer, a UPS worker, and a telemarketer, a job that would eventually become the subject of sorry to bother you. Rylee, welcome back to fresh air. Thanks. Thanks for having me. You know, I have watched I Love Boosters twice, and both times I was thinking, what does Boots know about Boosters?

Well, I have been a broke rapper for a long time having to stay fly, you know, just a job requirement. And so I've definitely had to deal with a lot of boosters. When I wrote that song 20 years ago, it was a lot of. lifetime of experience. So, and also just saw how, how much of a service it provided a community who's, in my case, the black community, I don't think they only exist in the black community, a community whose style is inspiring these things that are costing more than people can afford with the income that they have. That is the interesting. It's not an inverse.

but it is the thing that we sit with as the audience because we are living this world through the boosters themselves. And so we're able to see from the inside how they're interpreted from the outside and what's really happening. But you know, that term boosters, I had never heard that before. I think I heard like, okay, in Detroit, I know somebody with the hookup or, you know, I know a guy. Yeah. It's funny because online, there's this whole debate about where that term came from. from. There's people in New York saying, we came up with the term. There's people in, obviously, in the Bay Area saying we came up with the term. And there's people in Chicago saying, no, no,

boosters, we did that and such. So there's this whole debate. And, you know, obviously, I come from the Bay Area. So I'm going to shoot shots on that behalf. However, yeah, I think it was all over. And definitely people had different ways of calling it. But, you know, I have no idea. where it came from. There's somebody that could probably call in and tell us the etymology of that. Exactly. And I obviously am out of the loop. But I want to talk a little bit about what you were saying about the booster's place and how they serve the community.

And let's talk about that a little bit through the character Corvette herself, who's played by Kiki Palmer. And she isn't just a booster. She is a designer. And Christy Smith, the fashion. mogul that she admires, who's played by Demi Moore, steals one of her designs. And basically, this woman is hailed as a genius, but she's stealing from black and brown communities. When was the first time you kind of realized that idea that, like, what is being stolen is actually maybe yours in the first place? You know, I think you'd have to back it up to when I was 14 or 15,

and I got involved in supporting people who were organizing a canary worker strike. in Watsonville, California. So I got invited to a youth event based on that. And, you know, they, someone was like, hey, you know, we're going to have this thing. We'll be by at noon on Saturday. And back then, there's no cell phones. There's no anything. So you could totally ghost somebody a lot easier.

And I planned on it. So I was like, yeah, come by. I'm not going to be there. And so, but I forgot about it. And so they came by with a van full of 14-year-old girls. Yeah. And they were like, hey, you want to go to the beach? And I was like, oh, yeah, I definitely want to go to the beach with y'all.

And they were like, but first we're going to stop and stop off and support the Watsonville canary workers strike. And then so that's kind of how I got hoodwinked into it because I entered the van. with, you know, flirtatious goals. And then I met these girls who were like, they were talking about things that were on the news, world events, these sorts of, and things that I purposely was trying to ignore because I didn't have a sense that I could have any effect on it, right?

And they were talking about it. And I realized that they felt that they could have something to do with what happened. Yeah. And it was connected to this canary worker strike that we were going to. That this was not only about someone trying to get higher wages, but it was about how you might be able to create a movement that has the power to affect those. who are in power. And it started to me talking, started the conversation about what power actually is under this system. So I went in that one trip from wanting to get with these girls

to wanting to be them. Yes, to wanting to be them in understanding because they're opening up your world. But you grew up in a household with a father who also was teaching you through his actions, being an organizer, working in Detroit on behalf of the auto workers. And yeah, but the thing is, is that one thing that I think was good is my parents didn't, like, say, here, you have to learn this and blah, blah, blah, because I probably would have later thought of it as their stuff and not mine. It's interesting about the casting of this film because you've got some real big heavy hitters. You've got Don Cheetahe, you've got Demi Moore,

Kiki Palmer, who's been around since she was 11. She's been famous. Oh, yeah. And Lakeith Stanfield, part of whom you made famous with, you know, sorry to bother you, but he's since gone on and done so many things. And what's interesting is I interviewed Tessa Thompson a little while ago, and she told me the story of how you almost took her out of the cast of Sorry to Bother You because she had gotten a Marvel movie.

And you felt like she might be too exposed and too well-known. It wasn't just the Marvel movie to be. fair, but yeah. But the fact that she was well known. So what has changed for you in this idea? Because in this film, I mean, you've got all these heavy hitters. I think maybe just more confidence in myself. Like, I saw with Tessa, like how we made that a very specific thing.

You know what I'm saying? It worked. Yeah. And that I can write it in a way that we can shape it in a way. a way where it does have its own specificity. And I think maybe I was more reacting to how a lot of movies do. Like, it's the George Clooney. Is George Clooney breaking in the banks?

It's George Clooney being a sniper. It's George Clooney. And I was like, I don't want the, it's George Clooney doing this thing. I want it to be this character, right? And I think that what I've realized is that even though the star of it all, stars how big someone is can make people come to a. movie for that, then it's my job to make them forget what they know about that person, right, what they know about that actor. And it's also the actor's job. So I'm picking people

that can pull that off. Why was Kiki the person that had to be Corvette? Oh, I saw how in other movies they were like, okay, she does this one thing or these two things, this certain cadence and they were like missing this whole other piece of her of kiki yeah and not in all things they did this she's she's she's shown herself that's how i knew it right and also i met with her and i could see this thing and and and her willingness to go there you know and in the same way that often i'm trying to cast against type in that way i saw with this like this is a chance to see someone do stuff that they haven't done before and that she has this whole skill set that people were underappreciating. You've said that you love stories that live inside of a contradiction.

And what strikes me about this moment now in your life is you might have the most contradictions of all that you are living in this moment. I mean, you have produced a $20 million film. You're inside the system critiquing the system. But I'd like to know, How are you thinking about that? Yeah. Well, I think that we're all inside the system. I think if I had a job, I've had many jobs at retail. I've had many jobs, you know, doing stuff.

I've constructed redwood decks, all sorts of things like that. Yeah. I'm inside the system. Like, there's no getting out of it until we have a movement that creates a whole different system. But in particular, though, I mean, when your first movie, Sorry to Bother You came out, It was like a breakthrough of, oh, he is really speaking to the system. He's talking truth to power. It's very an anti-capitalist movie.

But now you're like a, you're entering the seasoned successful role, almost to the point where you are the system. You're part of that. And I think what my films and my music has always said is that we all are the system. And my goal with my art is to instigate class struggle. So the reason that people know about me, for instance, is because of originally, because of the music and now because of the movies. But from day one with the music, we were on EMI records, no longer existing corporation. But they were maybe one of the most owned by a lot of heinous multinational corporation, with investments all over the place, right? The reason is is because I want this out on a platform to talk to people who, you know, they're not seeking out alternative things.

They're not going to the punk DIY spot. So you got to get inside in order to get to the people that you want to talk to. But I wouldn't even put it that way because we're inside already. Like there's no getting out of it. There's no make, even if you make a commune in the woods by virtue of it. of you not actually changing the way things are. You're living inside capitalism. Our guest today is filmmaker, rapper, and organizer, Boots Riley.

His new film is titled I Love Boosters. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to my interview with Boots Riley. His new film, I Love Boosters, is a satirical look at a crew of,

women's shoplifters in the Bay Area. Before Riley was a filmmaker, he spent more than two decades fronting the political hip-hop group The Coup, whose albums include, Kill My Landlord, Steal This Album, and Party Music. And before he was a rapper, Riley loaded packages onto airplanes for UPS. And before that, he was a teenage labor organizer. He came up alongside radical politics. His father, Walter Riley, is a civil rights and criminal defense attorney in O.P.S. Oakland, who organized auto workers in Detroit before law school. You know, Boots, you have talked a lot about your father, and there's so many parallels between you and him.

You know, we're recording this the day after Mother's Day, and I had me thinking about your mother because there's something that you said years ago about your late mom that is stuck with me. You said that she put her hopes and dreams aside. and that watching her life taught you that many women don't have a chance to realize theirs. I don't remember saying that, but it sounds right. Yeah. Yeah.

What can you tell me about your mom? So my mother was born to a black pre-beat poet named Lawrence Patterson and a German Jewish mother named Anita Pinner in New York. And she was born in the 40s. just even then being mixed, it wasn't something that is as prevalent as now. And she got pregnant with my sister when she was 15. Wow. And kind of was left alone. To care for her.

Yeah, yeah. And before that time, she was part of the Children's Theater Workshop that became Sesame Street. How? In what way? She was one of the cast members. Oh, really? Yeah. What was her role?

I don't know. I just saw a picture and she told me about it because this would come up all the time about, because she then had four kids. And so she would sometimes let folks know, not just sometimes, a lot of times, let folks know what she gave. Well, what she gave up. Oh. And I didn't find out until after she died. She wrote a lot of poetry by reading her journals. don't read your mom's journals after she dies. You'll find a lot about other men and very specific things that you don't want to know about your mom.

But you also found out that she was a poet. And her mother also, though, was a poet. Her mother also was involved in theater and was the director of Oakland Ensemble Theater. Because she then later came, even though her mom, moved away from her when she was a teenage mother, she came to be like, no, you're going to help me with this. And she moved to Berkeley. That's how she got to the West Coast.

So your grandmother, your mother's mother is what introduced you. You talk about these stories about the theater in Oakland. That was your maternal grandmother. Yeah, yeah. But it definitely did not make me want to do theater. That whole experience. Yeah, just like in the sense that it was boring. people stuff, you know, like somebody sitting on the couch arguing with each other. There was always a slap.

Like, I think the actors of a certain age, they always want to slap. They'll be like, should they slap me? You know, something like that. That's the action. Right. Or that's like the emotional thing. What are the things I'll say, Boots, that struck me, though, about that quote that you don't remember that you said about your mom. I mean, it sounds true. When did you realize that though, that wow, my mom maybe didn't have a fully realized life. Was that something that you had the emotional intelligence as a child? Or was it when you were older?

Well, I think, you know, she told us. And also, that was what she was doing later was like, okay, I'm doing this now because I've had this other life, right? She was around artists. She was around musicians. I was around jazz musicians, John Handy, you know, like all. Some great ones. Yeah, Oliver Johnson.

One time she took us to France and we were with all these jazz musicians who were from Oakland. That was around the same time. I was 15. So I saw all this stuff. At the same time, I did also see like,

oh, these people don't grow up. Like, I had this idea about artists and musicians specifically. Like, there's an arrested development compared to the rest of whoever I knew, right? And so I was like, I definitely don't want to be a musician. Because I want to grow. I want to evolve.

I felt like it was just, and it was maybe the particular people she was around, right? But my point is that she wanted to be around the excitement of creating things. And so it took, you know, all of these things about art and music that she was exposing me to. And so there was definitely a huge artistic influence from that and from her whole side of things. But it was, yeah, very much I could see like she wasn't making things in the way that she wanted to do. Maybe not fulfilled. Yeah. Which it strikes me with I Love Boosters that this is a movie about women who are creators.

and their dreams are happening against a system that won't let them. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that story is just so prevalent around these people I know. You're right. You're pointing out some connection that I didn't think about. But I think for the same reason that I wrote the song I Love Boosters, I wanted to spend time with those characters and they seem interested. The real version of those characters.

They still do exist. How do you think your radical 15-year-old self would look at yourself today? They'd be like, are you kidding me? You're making Star Wars for radical politics? When can I see it? That's how you describe this film, is Star Wars for Radical Politics. You feel like this is the Star Wars for radical politics.

Yeah, well, I mean, but to be fair, Star Wars was supposed to be the Star Wars for radical politics. George Lucas, and I've confirmed this with him in person, and you can find him online talking about it. I just want to drop the fact that I have met George Lucas. Right. And that you've had this conversation. Yeah. Is that he originally was supposed to do what became Apocalypse Now.

Yeah. And after American graffiti, he had this hit. He figured he could do whatever he wanted. So it was based on Heart of Darkness. So he was doing Heart of Darkness, but where the main characters were the Viet Cong. Yep. And the person that they were going to get their version of Kurtz was someone who had betrayed them and started working with the United States and became evil in that. They were like, it's too radical.

You're not going to, you're never going to make this movie. Nobody's going to fund it. And he couldn't get funding. And he was like, how about if I put it in space? Yeah. And that is a story that, like, I can see why you hold on to that. And I think that's really interesting. For you, though, I just wonder, you know, that uses, like, space and science fiction and things.

And your art is much more on the nose. It's much more on the head. It's much more. It's using metaphor, but it's telling you. Yeah. Here's my thing. I feel like as long as I can keep you, like, so I've just done a tour. since South by Southwest,

I've played this movie 35 times maybe and I've sat through it every time. Boisterous laughter, sometimes I'm worried people aren't getting the dialogue because they're laughing over certain parts and, you know, it's crazy.

So my thing is, in the same way with my music, if I keep you dancing, I got you, right? In this case, all of that stuff, whatever. If I keep you laughing and keep you interested and keep you on the edge of your seat and feeling surprised and engaged, then I have license to do almost anything. So, but it's, it ends up being a balance because if I'm going to do this thing that says, hey, it's like A, B, and C, I have to have something that's still pulling you in. And so that's actually been the thing that I've honed for 30 years. This is my second film, but it's not my second thing. Right.

And I think what makes the film work is that it just works on a basic level. And then you think about like, oh, this is what he's saying. But it's very clear what I'm saying. It's not like, there's no, yeah, yeah. And I like art that does that. Boots Riley, thank you so much for this film and thank you for this conversation. Thank you so much for having. than me. Boots Riley's new film is I Love Boosters. It opens in theaters on May 22nd. May 8th marked the

100th birthday of Sir David Attenborough. Scientists from London's Natural History Museum noted the occasion by naming a new genus and species of a parasitic wasp after him. And he was honored on television with a special celebrating Attenborough's contributions to the history of nature documentaries, focusing on his favorite series, Life on Earth, Attenborough's Greatest Adventure, which premiered May 6th on PBS. It's available at pbs.org and the PBS app. Our TV critic David B. and Cooley has this review. I have been lucky enough to have had a long career-making natural history programs, but there was one series that changed everything.

life on Earth. For more than 70 years, David Attenborough has been exploring the planet and its living inhabitants, filming and marveling at a world full of natural treasures. In the process, he's become a natural treasure himself. As host and as narrator, his whispery, enthusiastic voice is instantly recognizable. And his nature series over the decades have been widely popular, from the trials of life and the life of birds to the planet earth, the blue planet, and this year's Ocean with David Attenborough.

His first on-camera work was in the mid-1950s as host of the BBC nature series ZooQuest. That program wasn't shown in the United States, but a taste of it is available in the new documentary, Life on Earth, Attenborough's greatest adventure. Here he is on ZooQuest as a very young man. But apart from lizards and chameleons, there were many other smaller, fascinating creatures to be seen in that patch of forest. Eventually, he gave up traveling the world with a film crew to become an administrator for the BBC. He commissioned such ambitious and pivotal projects as Kenneth Clark's 13-part civilization series. But his concept of TV eventually drove him out from behind the desk and back into the field.

I interviewed him for a book in 1991, and he said then, of his BBC executive approach, quote, it was our responsibility to say, what haven't we done and why aren't we doing it? And one of the things no one in TV was doing was a global TV series that told the entire story of evolution. Attenborough continued, the wonderful thing about making natural history documentaries is that there is something in any sequence. for everybody at every conceivable level of age, education, and interest. So he embarked upon Life on Earth, which began production 50 years ago. It took more than three years to film, visiting 40 countries and capturing more than 600 species. It was the way it was filmed, in part, that was so groundbreaking.

It used new lenses from Canon, new color film from Kodak, and experimented with new developments in film speeds, time lapse and micro photography. Life on Earth premiered on PBS in 1982 and was seen globally by over 500 million people in more than 100 territories. This new special has Attenborough looking back on Life on Earth and literally looking at it as it's projected in a screening room. He beams with pride and joy and with good reason. One sequence, perhaps the most famous of his career, has him in Rwanda, crouching a respectful distance from a mother gorilla and her offspring. He's about to begin a prepared speech about the importance of opposable thumbs when the mother

approaches and stares right into his face while her babies crawl on top of him affectionately. In life on earth, Attenborough says this. There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging the plants with the gorilla than any other animal I know. And in this new special, looking back on that very sequence, he says this, obviously touched. It's extraordinary, really.

I mean, it was one of the most privileged moments of our life, really. Attenborough's greatest adventure tells behind-the-scenes stories of the dangers Attenborough and his crew faced while filming life on earth. Surprisingly, most of those dangers came not from wild animals, but from humans, poachers and soldiers, gunfire in Rwanda, and threatened imprisonment in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It also tells the story of how some of its

most amazing TV moments were filmed. That's reason enough to seek out this special, which allows Attenborough to put his amazing career into perspective. But there's also his closing message, which really got to me, and which I'll close with as well. Thank you, David Attenborough, for a lifetime of priceless television. Natural History television has produced an understanding in the audience about the importance of the natural world. It's an understanding of the part that humanity plays in the way the world operates, and the way in which we are totally dependent upon the natural world. For every breath of air we take and every mouthful of food that we eat comes from the natural world.

And that if we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves. David B. and Cooley is Fresh Air's TV critic. Coming up, actor Will Sharp. He played a tech bro in season two of the White Lotus. And now he's Mozart in a new adaptation of Amadeus. This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.

Fresh Air producer Anne Marie Baldinado has our next interview. Here she is. 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 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 praised 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. Celieri, 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 Salio.

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 be very bit tart. You must at least be able to get me one meeting with the emperor.

It'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 this 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 did you do to prepare for this role? Did you learn about the historic figure, even, if this story of Mozart and Salieri was always a reimagining. So, I mean, the main preparation, I guess, was learning to play the piano pieces. Yes, which you did. Which I did, yeah.

And that was like six, seven months of piano lessons and, you know, just drilling specifically the pieces on camera. And then also, I guess, preparing for the conducting scenes where we tried to come up with a kind of hybrid language where, you know, in the day, it would have been very metronomic, quite unexpressive. And obviously now we're used to seeing, you know, slightly more freeform seeming, very expressive conducting. And so we tried to find a language that blended the two, I think, because so much of what is expressed in the show, for my character in particular, you know,

he's not very good at communicating with words. So a lot of a timeless story or what is going on, you know, within him is expressed through the big musical set pieces. So there was that kind of practical preparation. which I actually found quite helpful because it was a way of meditating on the character without sort of getting in my head. It was like something very specific and mechanical to practice

and you find yourself thinking about the story but not overthinking. It was almost like a kind of meditative practice or something. And then I did find that listening to Mozart's music was an incredibly helpful way of just kind of sinking into it and it's not like a resource that you normally have. And even just thinking about the sheer range of this music but also of his seemingly of his personality

where he's just very light and funny and playful at one end and super grand and dark and operatic at the other and trying to marry all of that into one person. Farron's just kind of, you know, if I had an hour free, walking around Budapest with that in my ears was quite helpful too.

There's part of the series when Mozart is composing the opera of the marriage of Figaro. He's kind of estranged from his wife, Constanza. He's left Viannese. to try to write. And he's with his collaborator in a pub. I'm making it sound kind of modern, but he's speaking to a woman in a pub. And it's a woman he just met. And he plays some of the music he has for her. And the woman asks if he's writing the opera for his wife. And Mozart

says, yes. And then the woman says, couldn't you just talk to her? And Mozart says, this is how I talk. And I was wondering about that idea, that idea that someone can't talk or express themselves in life and instead they express themselves or express what they really feel through their music through a work of art and trying to say what they can't say. And I was just wondering what you thought about that part of Mozart's struggle. I felt like it became a really important piece of it for me. And actually that line, I think, just came out in the rehearsing of the scene

or as we shot. Trying to sort of get to the bottom, I think, of who he was and what his predicament was, I guess, and more and more felt like, you know, enjoyable, like he doesn't know how to read a room. There's a lot written kind of speculatively about neurodiversity, and I tried not to sort of be too literal about that or to retro-diagnose him,

but definitely wanted to play him as slightly other. And he doesn't understand social norms or can't understand why people are offended if he said something that he's like, well, I think that's true, so what's the problem? So he's just kind of like things that are similar. to everyone else he can't do, and he can't communicate successfully in a kind of ordinary, normal way. But through his music, he's expressing a lot of what he isn't able to say day to day.

And so I guess that's why those sequences felt quite important in terms of understanding him as a character and also understanding his story. I want to ask you about this series too much, created by Lena Dunham. It's loosely based on Lena Denham's experience. moving from New York to London and meeting her husband, Louis Felber, who also co-created the series and writes the music for the show. Megan Stalter plays the New Yorker moving to London after a breakup, and she meets your character, Felix, who's a musician and recovering addict. The characters meet cute and they fall in love, but their relationship isn't easy. How would you describe your character, Felix? Felix, I guess, like, he just seemed like somebody who,

um, on the surface of it is quite, maybe seems cool or open, but actually quite quickly you realize he's a bit of a nerd. And also there's a lot going on that he doesn't want you to see. And, you know, a lot of the series, what I love about it is, it's kind of about how you're, previous experiences and in relationships can get in the way of your present day one and how, you know, can you get beyond the baggage that you carry with you?

And each of those characters have, you know, do have baggage and are kindending with it. I want to play a clip from too much. In this scene, Megan Stalter's character, Jess and Felix are running to get to a wedding in the countryside. Felix is someone who grew up very posh, went to boarding school until his family lost their money and he has to leave because they couldn't pay for school anymore. But he's still friends with a lot of the rich people he met as a kid. But he doesn't feel comfortable with them. Here's the scene where they're running to get to the church. You're sure my outfit's okay? I've only been inside of a church once in a to donate blood.

I feel like I should be wearing a hat or something. Do you have a hat? Like a beanie, of course. Okay, listen, you probably haven't seen me like this before, but I actually feel pretty, like, weird. Like, I kind of feel a bit fizzy. You know what I mean? Like, kind of tight.

Like white noisy. You're nervous. Yeah, maybe. You look like you want to pass out. Like, like, like, these aren't really my people. Okay? Well, why don't we just go home or I could eat to his toasties or something?

I don't know. I feel sort of weirdly loyal to the groom because he was the only boy in my year who didn't call me Felix Ramen. It's like a boy. racist nickname. Yes, the racist nickname. I'm not saying we can't be ourselves.

I'm just saying, like, I don't know. You know what I'm saying, right? Just sort of not our full selves. Yes, over and out. I agree with Mr. Felix. That's seen from the Netflix show too much. Lena Dunham said that she loved having you on set, not only because of your acting,

but because you're also a writer, a show creator, and director. And she said that you contributed a lot to the character, Felix. including the bit in that scene that the kids at the school called him Felix Raman. Can you talk about collaborating with Lena Dunham on this show and on your character? I mean, I think that's very generous of her to say, but she's sort of the agent of all of it, really. But I did feel very listened to. And I guess it did feel like we were always working together to find who he was,

even from like our very first cup of tea to talk about it, you know, in London. and she definitely would, she has this like incredibly fast story brain and is able to retain information and encounters in a very sort of formidable way and sometimes we'd have like a very offhand conversation about a scene or an episode that was coming up and then I'd see rewrites that seemed to kind of work that conversation into it. But yeah, with the Felix Remen thing,

his name was Felix Remen in the show and I think I just was like there is absolutely no way if his name was Felix Remen and he's half Japanese and he went to that kind of school that he wouldn't be called Felix Raman. There's just absolutely no way that he wouldn't be called Felix Raman. Now, you were born in England

and then your family moved to Japan for your early childhood before then moving back to England. Could you describe what your childhood neighborhood was like when you were living those early years in Japan? I mean, very urban compared to like suburban Surrey where we moved to in England

I mean I remember like the sound of the cicadas in the summer and I don't know a lot of it is quite our role for me like the sound of train stations in Tokyo or like we're near my grandma's house who just turned 100 last week you know there's like a chime

that goes off at kind of 5pm every evening and a lot of it weirdly I've not had this thought before maybe it's because I'm doing a radio show so my brain is in like listening sound is so important but it does feel like a lot of it it's quite yeah hour off

but there's definitely like I'd often talk about like a kind of layer of nostalgia that I feel like is unavailable to me in England where I can sort of reminisce up to a point

but there's like a sort of plain of memory or feeling or something that is left in Japan and that I would only get when I've been, when I've gone back to Japan. And it's a weird thing where, I think, you know, people who have lived in different countries or who are mixed race,

you do sometimes end up with this feeling that you're not really sure where your home is or how to identify. And so, you know, if I go back to Japan, I can speak the language, but kind of in a very wobbly way where I sound a bit like a, 10-year-old still. And I sort of feel like a very gaigian, you know, Western version of a

Japanese person. I feel like a sort of foreigner, I suppose. And in the same way in England, because I look Japanese, I've always felt a little bit like, yeah, like an outsider trying to kind of learn, learn how people communicate in England, which can be sort of quite complicated at the best of times. I want to ask you about the 20-24 film, a real Payne. Jesse Eisenberg wrote, directed, and starred in the film. It's about two cousins who used to be close but aren't anymore. They're played by Jesse Eisenberg and Karen Culkin, who won an Oscar for his role in the film. And to try to connect, the cousins go to Poland on a Holocaust history tour to honor their late grandmother and to visit the house that she had to flee. You play James,

the tour guide, who isn't Jewish, but is a historian of Jewish. Jewish history. I want to play a scene from a real pain. The group has been on the trip for a while and is traveling between Holocaust sites via train. And the group is traveling first class. Kieran Culkin's character, Benji, he's a big personality and at times questions the tour, questions his cousin, questions you as their guide. And here Benji is uncomfortable traveling in the comfort, in comfort on the train, thinking about what his ancestors had to under Benji, played by Karen Culkin, speaks first. 80 years ago, we would have been herded into the backs of these things like cattle.

Okay, Benji, I don't think anybody here wants to hear that right now. Okay, why not? Why doesn't anyone want to hear it? Because it's depressing. It's okay. It's okay. You're raising an interesting sensitivity here. It does sometimes come up on these tours. You're staying in fancy hotels, eating posh food, and at the same time, you're looking back at the horrors of your family history. It can conjure up confusing feelings of discomfort and discordant. and, dare I say, even a kind of guilt, you know, comparing your own life. I don't feel guilt. No, nor should you, Mark.

Why would I feel guilt? No, I'm not saying that you have to feel guilt. Well, because of lives are so pampered and privileged. Like, we completely cut ourselves off from anyone else's true pain. That's a scene from a real pain. And in that scene, we also heard Jesse Eisenberg, Jennifer Gray, and Daniel Oreske. That's just one of the scenes where Kieran Culkin's character questions the tour and questions what this group is.

doing. What was it like filming those scenes with Kieran Kalkin? I would think it's very heightened. Yeah, you know, he's an electric performer and it was kind of fun and like I remember on that scene, Jesse, as he always did, came in with a very specific plan about how to shoot it and where everyone would be and how it was going to be choreographed because, you know, we're on a train so the options are limited and Kieran was like, hang on a minute, why would I stand there or let's rehearse it. Let's see what happened. And so even before we'd started rolling in a kind of metadramatic way, they'd fallen into the same dynamic as the characters. And Jesse would, of course, very wryly be like, well, this is perfect because you have no respect for me as a director and nor does the character have any respect for me. So this is going to work great.

And it did work great. And it really did feel like because we were traveling through these places. It felt like we really were at this little unit going on this journey. And it's just exciting to act opposite here in some of my favourite scenes. were, you know, getting to go head to head with Benji. And you sort of know he's always going to bring it and it's always going to work. But then he's also very playful and kind of doesn't mind pushing the edges of it, which I think sometimes makes four really unexpected choices that can lead to, you know,

interesting things happening on camera. And so you have to kind of react a different way each time. Yeah, a little bit. But that's fun. And it suited the character for him to have that energy. Well, Will Sharp. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Will Sharp stars in the new limited series Amadeus, which is available on stars.

He spoke with producer Anne-Marie Baldinado. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanishefsky. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Crenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaliner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nestper. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.