Best Of: Boots Riley / Will Sharpe

are also going down the drain and into our waterways. That's changing the animals that live in it.

“It's definitely present in most of the ecosystem on Earth now, unfortunately,”

throwing these sort of really starting to scratch the surface into understanding the potential consequences of that. Forget cocaine bear. Learn about cocaine salmon on shortwave, in the MPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. From WHY and 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 shop lifters 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 Koo.

As long as a love letter to shop lifters or boosters is their 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, just a job requirement. Also, we'll hear from actor Will Sharpe. He starred in Lena Dunham 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 Kooley reviews a new special by David Attenborough. That's coming up on Fresh Share Weekend. It can be hard to keep up with all the new movies on streaming services. How do you tell

“the good ones worth watching from the bad? Or the silly ones you can laugh along with, or at?”

On NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're recommending some fun movies you may have missed. Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Share Weekend, I'm Tonya Mosley. My guest today is filmmaker, rapper, and community organizer, Boots Riley. His work for the last few decades has circled the same argument. The capitalism produces the contradictions we live with, and that art can make them visible.

He made that argument as the front man of the Oakland-based hip-hop group, the Koo, and in his screenwork with his 2018 film, "Sorry to bother you." A surreal satire about a black telemarketer who finds 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 shop lifters, or boosters as their call.

I love boosters the film, stars Kiki Palmer as the leader of a crew of women shop lifters 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 the Keith Standfield plays a figure who threatens the whole operation. As you heard before Riley made films, he made music. The Koo 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." Boots Riley, 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 lifetime of experience. Also, just saw how much of a service it provided a community whose, 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

inversion, 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

heard that before. I think I heard like, okay, in Detroit, I know somebody with the hookah or, you know,

I know a guy, yeah. It's funny because online there's this whole debate about where that term came from. There's people in New York saying, "We came up with the term, there's people in obviously, in the Bay Area," and we came up with the term, and there's people in Chicago saying, "No, no, boosters, we did that in such an, 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, 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 that the biology of that. Exactly. And obviously, I'm out of the loop. But I want to talk a little bit about what you were saying about the boosters' 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 at Myers, who's played by Dimmi 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's 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 it noon on Saturday. And back then, there's no cell phones. There's no anything. So you could totally go 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. 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 child. 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, the 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 that, which one had been. Yeah. And that, and it was connected to this canary workers strike that we were going to right. 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 the system. So I went

in that one trip from one and to get what these girls to one and to be them. Yes, to one and 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 and working into great 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 in 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 got some real big heavy hitters. You've got Don Cheeto. You've got Demi Moore Kiki Palmer who's been around since she was 11. She's been famous. Yeah. And the key standfield 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 interview Tessa Thompson a little while ago and she

hit 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 and 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, I'm saying, and I'm aware. Yeah. And that that I can write it in a way that we can shape it in a way where it does have its own specificity. And so 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 into 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 the 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 is certain cadence. And they were like missing this whole other piece of her.

“Kiki. Yeah, and not in all the things they did. 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 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 were 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 of 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,

he is really speaking to the system. He's talking truth to power. It's very anti-capitalist movie. But but now you're like us, you're entering the seasoned successful role. Almost to the point where

“you are the system. Yeah. And I think what my films in 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, 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. 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 we're inside already. Like there's no getting out of there's no make even if you make a commune in the woods. By virtue 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 week on the MPR Politics Podcast, President Trump in China, the latest on a summit that was

trade partner of China. What's happening with tariffs and how is it affecting consumers on the

“MPR politics podcast? Listen on the MPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.”

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 shop lifters in the Bay area. Before Riley was a filmmaker, he spent more than two decades fronting the political hip-hop group the crew. Whose albums include Kill My Landlord, Steel 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 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. 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 and in New York and she was born in the 40s. So just even then being mixed, it wasn't something that is prevalent is now. And she got pregnant with my sister when she was 15. Wow. And kind of was left alone. She cared for her. Yeah. Yeah. And before that time, she was part of the children's theater workshop

that became Sesame Street. Wow. And what way? She was one of the cast members. Really? 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 in by reading

her journals. Don't read your mom's journals after she dies. You'll find a lot about other men and various 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 on Sombo 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 talked about these stories about the theater in Oakland. That was your maternal grandmother. Yeah, yeah. But it was it definitely did not make me want to do theater. Because that whole experience. Yeah, just like in the sense that it was boring old 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. Right. They'll be like, should they slap me? You know something like that. That's the action. Right. Yeah, or that's like the emotional thing. What's 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 were had in emotional intelligence as a child or was it when you were, 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 a round artist. She was a round musician. I was a round jazz musician, John Handy. You know, like,

all great ones, really? Yeah, Oliver Johnson. One time she took us to France and we were with

So I saw 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 a rest of development compared to the rest of the rest of whoever I knew, right? And so I was like, I definitely don't want to be a musician. I want to grow. I want to grow. I felt like it was just, and it was maybe the particular people she was round, right? So, but my point is 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 be. Maybe not, you know, 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 that won't let them. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that story is just so prevalent around this 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 you're radical 15 year old self or 25 year old self? What 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 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 hard of darkness. So he was doing hard of darkness. But where the main characters were the vehicle. 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

find 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. 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 are 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 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,

yeah, yeah. And I, 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 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 Kooley 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 whispering 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 Zoo Quest. 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 Zoo Quest as a very young man. But apart from the lizards and civilians,”

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?" Unquote. 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 in 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 and exchanging the plants with the gorilla. It's an anyhow brand of mine now. And in this new special, looking back on that very sequence, he says this, obviously touched. It's too ordinary. I mean, it was one of the most pivotal moments of our life being there. Attenborough's greatest adventure tells behind the scene stories of the dangerous Attenborough in

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 it's 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, in 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 Kooley is fresh air's TV critic.”

Coming up actor Will Sharpe, 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 week, on Consider This, a stunning shift at the Department of Justice, since President Trump took off his public corruption investigations have plummeted nearly 90 percent. A long-term concerns I'd argue are it diminishes faith and federal prosecutions in the rule of law. We unpack what

it means for the DOJ and how our government operates on Consider This, listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Fresh air producer and Marie Boldenado has our next interview. Here she is. Our guest is award-winning actor, writer, and director, Will Sharpe. 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 Sharpe had been noticed for his work already. He has been nominated for numerous baffdas. 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 baffdas for acting in the BBC Netflix series, Jerry Hajji. More recently, he's appeared in

Lena Dunham series too much and the Oscar-winning film "A Real Pain." Now his 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. 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

portraitist. The whole reason why I came to Vienna was to write for the Imperial Opera.

“Well, well, there's a process to all of that up. I wouldn't dare be taught. 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? The 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 may be taking up some of his time. Please. Just one meeting. I'll be forever in your debt, obviously. Will Sharpe, 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?

Yeah, because they're all there. Yeah. And that was like six, seven months of piano lessons

and just drilling specifically the pieces on camera. And then also, I guess preparing for the conducting scenes where we try to come up with a kind of hybrid language where in the day it would have been very metronomic, quite unexpressive and obviously now we're used to seeing, you know, slightly more free form seeming, very expressive conducting. And so we tried to find a language that

“blended the two, I think, has 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 for time of 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 then 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 ways. It's just very light and funny and playful at one end and super grand and dark and operatic. The other and trying to marry all of that into one

person. I found it 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, the marriage of Figaro. He's kind of his strange from his wife Constanza. He's left Vienna to try to write and he's with his collaborator in a pub, a making 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 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. It's trying to get to the bottom I think of who he was and what his predicament was I guess. And it more and more felt like you know enjoy it but 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 retrodiagnose but definitely wanted to play him slightly other and he doesn't understand social norms or

kind of understand why people are offended. 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 simple to everyone else he can't do and he can't communicate successfully in an 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 Dunham'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 seems like somebody who on the surface of it is quite maybe seems cool or open but actually quite quickly you realise 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 your previous

experiences and in relationships can get in the way if 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

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. These aren't really my people okay. Oh I just go home I can eat Tuesdays or something.

I don't know I feel so weirdly loyal because of the groom because he usually only boy in my yet he didn't call me Felix ramen. It's like a racist nickname. Yeah so racist nickname. I'm not saying we can't be ourselves I'm just saying like I don't know you know I'm saying right just sort of not our full self. Yes over and out I agree you Mr. Felix. That's being from the Netflix show too much. Lena Dunnam 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 ramen. Can you talk about collaborating

“with Lena Dunnam 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 involved it really but I did feel very listen to and I guess that

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 like 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 seem to kind of work that conversation into it but yeah with the Felix Remin thing he his name was Felix Remin in the show

and I think I just was like there is absolutely no way if his name was Felix Remin and he's half Japanese and he went to that kind of school that he wouldn't be called Felix ramen there's just absolutely no way that he wouldn't be called Felix ramen. 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 suburb and sorry when 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 oral for me like the sound of train stations in Tokyo or like what near my grandma's house you just turned a hundred last week you know there's like a chime that goes off for kind of five PM every evening and it's a lot of it with the I've not had this thought before maybe it's something a radio show so my brain is in like listening yeah but it does feel like a lot of it's quite yeah oral 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 plane 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 have 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 guysian you know western version of a Japanese person I feel like I sort of foreign or 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 how people communicate in England which can be sort of quite complicated at the best of times I want to ask you about the 2024 film a real pain Jesse Eisenberg wrote directed and starred in the

and Kieran Kolkin 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 Turgide who isn't Jewish but is a historian of Jewish history I want to play a scene from a real pain the group has been on the trip for a while and it's traveling

between Holocaust sites via train and the group is traveling first class Kieran Kolkin's character Benji

is a big personality and at times questions the tour questions is pleasant 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 endure Benji played by Kieran Kolkin speaks first 80 years ago we had been heard into the back of these things like cattle 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 okay you're raising an interesting sensitivity here it does sometimes come up on these tours you're staying in fancy hotels in 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 discordance and dare I say even a kind of guilt you know compare in your own life I don't feel

“guilt no no I should you mark well but I feel guilt no I'm not saying that you you have to feel”

guilt because the 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 Oreski that's just one of the scenes where Kieran Kolkin's character questions the tour and questions what this group is doing what was it like filming those scenes with Kieran Kolkin 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 wherever it 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 happens and so even before we'd started rolling in a kind of metatromatic way they'd fallen into the same dynamic as the characters and Jesse would of course like very rightly be like well this is perfect because you have no

respect for me it's a director and not as the character having your 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 Kieran some of my favourite scenes were you know getting to go had 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 for really unexpected choices that can lead to you know interesting things happening

“on camera and so you have to kind of react at a different wage time yeah a little bit but that's fun”

and it suited the character if I him to have that energy well we'll sharp thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me it was a pleasure we'll sharp stars in the new limited series Amadeus which is available on stars he spoke with producer and Marie Baldonato fresh air weekend is produced by Theresa Madden fresh air executive producer is Sam Bricker our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham our engineer today is Adam Stanishewski our interviews and reviews

are produced in edited by Philis Myers Roberto Chorac and Marie Baldonato Lauren Crimson only Knazareth they a challenger Susan Nakundi and Abelman and Nico Gonzalez with Slayer our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper with Terry Gross I'm Tanya Mosley why do some of us feel so tired and other people seem to have endless energy what we've discovered is that different people have very different kinds of mitochondria and some people have mitochondria seem to be quite a bit better at flowing

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