Best Of: ‘Hamnet’ star Jessie Buckley / Documentarian Morgan Neville

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More information is available at Hewlett.org. From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, Jesse Buckley, she may win an Oscar a week from Sunday for her starring role in Hamlet. She's already won a Golden Globe. She plays William Shakespeare's wife, facing conflicts in their marriage and the death of their son.

After portraying a grieving mother, Buckley found out she was pregnant. The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother,

“was tenderness, you know, and that was a word and feeling that I think I didn't know”

was what I was looking for. Also, documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville tells us about his new documentary

man on the run, which focuses on Poem McCartney's life and music after the breakup of the Beatles. And John Powers reviews a Japanese film about a gangster son who dreams of being a star in Kabuki theater. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. Support for NPR and the following message, come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem-solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish.

More information is available at Hewlett.org. This is Fresh Air Weekend, I'm Terry Gross.

The film HamNet is nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Actress for my guest, Jesse Buckley.

HamNet's other nominations include Best Picture, Best Director for Chloe Jow, who's also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, along with Maggie O'Farell, the author of the novel HamNet, which the film is based on. Buckley plays William Shakespeare's wife, Onus Hathaway. Little is known about Shakespeare's real wife, the film is largely an imagined version of her. What's true is that the couple's son HamNet, dieted age 11, from the plague.

In the film he catches it from his twin sister. Shakespeare has already left the couple's home in the country to go to London and work on writing and staging his plays, and has promised to bring the rest of the family as soon as he settled and has a little more money.

“When HamNet gets sick and its clear his life is in jeopardy, Onus calls for her husband to come home,”

but he doesn't make it in time. Shakespeare and HamNet don't get to say goodbye, and Onus is left to experience the horror of her son's death without her husband. In this scene, when Shakespeare does return, she's angry that he came too late, but she also feels guilty that she didn't pay enough attention to HamNet while she was caring for their daughter who survived the plague. Shakespeare is played by Paul Mascola.

I should have paid a more attention. I also thought she was the one to be taken away when all the while was him. I was full. There's nothing I knew I could have done to save her. You did everything that you could. Looks like it. You weren't here. I would have cut my heart out and given it to him, I would have laid my life down the ground for it. I know. I know. You don't know. You weren't here.

He died in agony. He was in agony. I hate any cry, and he cried, and he cried, and he cried, and he cried, and he cried, and he cried, and he cried, and he was so scared, and you weren't here. The film has become known for leaving a lot of people in tears. Buckley went a golden globe for her performance in HamNet. Other films, which she received various awards or nominations, include the lost daughter, women talking, beast, wild rose, and men. On TV she was a star of season

four of Fargo and a star of the HBO series Chernobyl. Her new film The Bride, as in The Bride of Frankenstein, opened in theaters Friday. Jessie Buckley, welcome to fresh air and congratulations on your Oscar nomination and your golden globe win. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. What were you able to learn about Shakespeare's real wife? And how does that compare

“with how she's depicted in the movie? How you depict her in the movie? Well, I think before I”

read this book, what had been written about Shakespeare's wife was, it wasn't great. You mean it wasn't positive or it wasn't a lie? No, it wasn't positive. I think she was kind of given the title of being a woman that had kept him back from his genius and I think what Miguel Fargo saw brilliantly did, not just with Anias and Shakespeare's wife, but also

and the plays that have lived forever and given them status beside this great man, which is full

and vibrant. In this imaginary version of her life, people think she must be part witch because she was born on the woods and so was her mother. And she knew so much about herbs

“in herbal medicine and got along with animal. She was a falconer. So we don't know how true that is, right?”

No, but I think it's interesting. What is so frightening about her? That was a question I was asked. Like what is it about this woman that is other? That people feel a need to call her the a forest witch or a daughter of a forest witch or somebody that was too much against the society at

the time. And my experience of playing this incredible woman was her uncompromising embodiment

and connection to nature and her own elemental nature. And I guess at that time, it was kind of the beginning of puritism and capitalism and paganism was kind of becoming something scary and people were beginning to decipher themselves off like machines, you know, how you could work a land and create produce with something that at that time in history was becoming conscious in the culture and yet this woman was just deeply connected to nature.

One of the producers, Pippa Harris, is quoted in the production notes,

talking about how you embody the character of Anyes. She says about you, she's quite a wild child in the sense that she's very much at one with nature. She's slightly mystical. She believes in the

“soul and the spirits and she's a really caring person. When you hear that, does that sound like you?”

Um, yeah. Uh, yeah. I mean, I grew up around a lot of nature. I grew up in southern Ireland in a town called Clarini, which has lots of mountains and lakes and um, we there was a lot of freedom and expression by just living in that place when we were younger and I think when you grew up in a landscape like that, your mind and your soul is his wild, you know, things just grow because they want to grow. There's no planting or or or formula to the nature in that in that place.

And I think that was really informative to me as a child and still is. Getting back to that quote, um, do you believe in spirits and um, consider yourself a little mystical, because I'd love to hear more about that if you care to share it.

“Spirits, I, I do. I believe in energy. I believe that like you have a conversation with somebody's”

energy and and and spirit. Absolutely. And I think, um, even people who've passed that there is a spirit in the very memory of them that lives on. Um, and I guess in the mystical sense is like, I guess what that's making me think of is like, it's about curiosity, isn't it? Of curiosity of of an unknown and a seeking. I don't, yeah, and I guess I like to live in that place as to be curious about and something unknown. One of the best non-seans in the movie is when

your son has just died and you're just like howling with grief and despair. And a wondering is that something that you rehearsed a lot or prepared for, or did you try to be spontaneous about it? Because like that's a scene that really brings out everyone's tears. Um, no, I didn't know that that was going to happen or come out. It wasn't in this script. I think really Chloe asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. And of course,

leading off to, you know, you're aware that this scene is coming, but that scene doesn't stand on its own. By the time I'd met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacoby

And Jacoby Jew who plays Hamlet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul.

And we really were a team. And I think we both recognize where we might go, but where that my end we didn't know. And look, the death of a child is unfathomable. I don't know where it begins and ends. I out of awe to respect. I try to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could. But there's no way to define that kind of grief. I'm sure it's different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination, but also this relationship that was right in

“front of me with this little boy. And that's what came out of that moment.”

You hadn't yet become a mother, but you did get pregnant. I think like a week before Hamlet opened do I have that right? I a week after I wrapped filming. Okay. Yeah, that something was cooked. Were you trying or was that really a surprise that seems so like the timing of it just seems amazing? I wanted to become a mother for a long time. And schedules, life being a different place is work. You know, it was hard. And that was kind of like an an a beautiful thing, but also an

intense thing to kind of feel that in my own personal life beside this mother that I was living

“inside and in anus. The thing I've realized becoming a mother is that it humbles you down”

to your knees and any idea you think of yourself in being a mother or becoming a mother or

in birth or any of it. I mean, good luck because it's never like that. It's always brings you on

a way more kind of wild journey. I'm wondering if portraying the mother of Hamlet, you know, on the wife of William Shakespeare, spooked you because you had just experienced the grief that a mother has on her 11-year-old son dies and now you were about to become a mother. So were you spooked by the thought a son can die, a child can die? I wasn't spooked. Not because I didn't think about it, but I don't know what are you going to do, you know, like lock yourself up and not kind of

you know, my work. I'm not scared to touch the shadowy bits. I like them. They like help me.

“I think my experience when I don't touch them is that they show up in a more destructive kind of”

bigger way. So actually the thing that this story offered me that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness, you know, and that was a word and a feeling that I think I didn't know was what I was looking for and a mother's tenderness, it's it's forrocious, you know, to birth is no joke, to be born is no joke and the minute something's born into the world,

you're always in the precipice of life and death. That's our path, you know, we have, we all know we're

going to head towards that destination, I guess. And I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of us. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jesse Buckley. She's nominated for an Oscar for her starring role in Hamlet. We'll hear more of our interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air Weekend. The director, Clorjau, sent the cast to a coach who uses dream analysis as a tool for insights into who you are

and who your character is. Did you find that helpful? Yeah, I actually introduced Chloe to this woman

I'm not very good at linear thoughts or projections and I found school very difficult because it was

“too linear and formulaic and I couldn't learn like that and you know, with characters and”

work it's the same. I don't want to project an idea onto the women that I play until I've lived beside them and then in them and I find dreams really curious things and I, you know, when you open a book or you open this script and the world of that script begins to kind of reflect itself around you, your unconscious does stir the waters towards that world and I find it a very

interesting and useful tool to abstractly enter into an essence of a being rather than projecting

an idea on top of them and I create so much from this way of working, I write, I collect pictures, I'm like a magpie, you know, music, I paint, it spills out of me when I start working like that so I find it so useful and it's also just to say it's not a new thing like the surrealists were using it, Dali was using it, I'm pretty sure David Lynch used his dreams in his films as Fellini, there's this extraordinary Fellini book of all of his dreams and he's created, it's this most

beautiful book where all the characters that he's found in his dreams are all painted in this book and you can see them in like eight and a half and um, let's try it so it's not a new tool, it's just something to get curious about. In addition to stirring and hamnut, you start in a new film called The Bride, which is Maggie Gillin Hall's take on The Bride of Frankenstein like what if The Bride of Frankenstein was a feminist who spoke out about misogyny and

corruption but she's also totally wild and out of control, really nasty so must have been, it must have

“been such a kind of shock from going to making The Bride to making Hamnut because I think even”

though The Bride's opening later than Hamnut did, I think you made The Bride first. I made The

Bride first. Yeah. Oh and also you know, The Bride of Frankenstein, you're reanimated like you've died and you're brought back to life like Frankenstein. Yeah. Whereas, you know, in Hamnut, that's all about a dead son staying dead, living and kind of, living and kind of. Yes. Like Shakespeare reincarnates his song through the vessel of a story which is what happens at that end, you know, is when she reaches out, she can touch the thing that she thought she'd lost because

her husband has created the greatest magic trick of her life. When her son dies, it's so ginormous that she can't find him until that moment when the vessel of a story can help you. Yeah. Touch the things that you can't hold by yourself. When you are making The Bride inspired by The Bride of Frankenstein, written and directed by Maggie Jillon Hall, you were pregnant and had to hide your pregnancy on screen. So how did you do it? Well, I wasn't pregnant for the main

shooting sequence, but when we came back to do a reshoot for something, I was eight months pregnant, so they just had to do it from the boobs up, Terry. It's like just the face. The face was my only two to work from, but I mean, I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about monstrosity and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. And I, you know, becoming a mom and

“being pregnant did something, I think for me, my experience of it, it's so real that it really”

focuses you to be, I'm allergic to fake. I, or to disconnection. Like, I think, since my daughter is common, I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody, kind of soft chat is, I can't stomach it anymore, or talking around the thing. And as

You know, I remember in filming that I was really close to giving birth, you know, and being like,

I have this amount of energy. I will give you everything I got, but I know there'll be a time when I cannot give you anymore and that's going to be the end of the day. And actually that

“really focuses you on set, you know, and I think maybe when you're a younger, you're so in,”

in awe and reverence that you've been invited into this world, which is part of where you are at that moment, but it's also good to put in some boundaries and focus your work. And I think

I'm excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways,

because I've shed 10-year layers of skin by loving more and an experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I'm also scared to work again because, you know, it's hard to be a mother and to work. That's like a constant tug, because I love what I do and I'm passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled. And also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug. Do you think if you took a break

along one, do you have a fear that you'd be forgotten when you were ready to come back?

“No, I don't feel afraid of that. You're just torn between what you should do.”

You know, like, just become a full-time mother for a while or keep acting. I don't think I have to choose, you know, I really don't. I think I'm glad to hear that. It just sounded to me like you thought you needed to do. No, I just think it's an honest feeling. You know, I woke up this morning. I haven't seen my daughter in four days and it hurts, you know, I miss her. But I also I'm inspired to be around people that make me dream and imagine and I need to do what I do.

And I think I will be a better mother to continue to be passionate about something in my life and show my daughter that you don't have to lose any part of yourselves. Of course there is, of course it's hard, but it's also a beautiful thing to miss something. Like, I missed. I haven't filmed for nearly a year and I cannot waste. Like, I'm hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me, you know, she's seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us. And it's a beautiful

life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life. And that's

a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that's something that I've imparted to her and her

“the short time that she's been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and”

alive and there's no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it's like, it's worth this. Well that's a nice note to end on. So congratulations again on your Oscar nomination and your Golden Globe win for Hamlet. And thank you so much for coming on our show. Thanks for having me. It's a privilege. Jessie Buckley is nominated for an Oscar for her starring role in Hamlet. It's playing in select theaters and is available for streaming.

She also stars in the film The Bride, which opened in theaters Friday. the new Japanese film Coco Ho said box office records in its home country. It tells the story of a gangster son who dreams of being a star in Japan's famously rigorous Kabuki theater. Coco Ho was nominated for an Oscar for hair and makeup. Our critic at large John Powers says the film carried him away into a fascinating subculture whose demands are at once familiar and unfamiliar.

at the Olympics. It had thrown me with his extraordinary display of prowess and grace,

“but also with its fragility, its constant sense of precariousness. Years of hard work could go”

poof at any second. As I watched, I kept thinking of the gorgeous new movie Coco Ho. I'll explain

why later. But first, let me say that Coco Ho is set in and around the world of Kabuki, the 400-year-old theatrical form that lies near the heart of Japanese culture. Spanning half a century and running nearly three hours, this quiet epic is the top-grossing Japanese live-action film of all time. You can see why. It's bursting with emotion and beauty. It's costumes, hair, and makeup are dazzling. Lee Sang Il's film tells a compelling story about friendship, the weight of history,

the quest for perfection, and the torturous road to becoming a living national treasure, which is what the word "Kokuho" means. When we first meet the hero Kikuho, he's 14 and playing

a female role in an excerpt from a famous Kabuki play. Men play all the roles in Kabuki.

“His performance is seen by a Kabuki star Hennai that's Ken Watanabe,”

who's impressed by his talent. When Kikuho's Yakuza father is murdered by a rival gang, Hennai takes him in as a prodigy, teaching him to become an owner-gata, a male actor who plays female roles. There is one snag. Hennai already has a son of the same age, Shinsuke, who's slated to be his artistic heir, and on the Kabuki world, artistic status passes from generation to generation. Naturally, we expect Kikuho and Shinsuke to become rivals,

and in a way they do. Yet as they share the sometimes cruel ordeal of their training,

they become friends and acting partners. Each sees how the other is trapped.

Despite his fanatical dedication, Kikuho is considered a low-born outsider, complete with a Yakuza tattoo in his back, that the hide-boun Kabuki culture doesn't want to accept.

“In contrast, Shinsuke has expected to become a luminary like his dad. Even though at some”

gut level, he doesn't even like Kabuki. Born into a role he doesn't want. He'd rather party than practice. We follow their entwined fates over the decades, as sometimes melodramatic dance of triumph and humiliation, complete the sexual rivalries and ignored children. Playing with riftling dry-ice intensity by Yoshizawa Rio, Kikuho becomes positively foused in his desire for greatness. While the less gifted bit farmer-like-able Shinsuke,

that's the very enjoyable Yuka Hama Ruse, labors to escape his destiny. With their friendship providing the dramatic pull, Kikuho tackles grand themes. It paints a portion of a late 20th century Japan still suffocating beneath musty ideas about birth and cultural inheritance. And in Kikuho's struggle to become Japan's greatest Kabuki actor, we feel the chilly isolation of devoting yourself to an art-form so demanding

that leaves little room for ordinary human connection. We also have the pleasure of learning about a ravishing art alien to most of us. Normally, when we hear the phrase Kabuki Theodore in America, often in the political realm, it's used derisively to suggest something ritualized, empty, pro-forma. But watching Kikuho, you see how shallow this notion is. The Kabuki scenes we're shown are thrillingly performed by Yoshizawa and Yuka Hama,

who each met a year and a half training to do the film. They make us feel the primal power in Kabuki's blend of dance, music, and acting, as it tells tales of love suicides, or women who reveal themselves to be serpents. Just as Olympic skaters must perform certain compulsory leaps and loops, and are judged on how well they do them. So Kabuki actors have certain gestures they must perform in a role, and they are expected to do them perfectly.

It one can be technically flawless and still be middling. For a skater, the true measure of greatness is the expressive artistry of the free skate. For a Kabuki actor like Kikuho, what makes you a national treasure isn't merely doing every dance and gesture to perfection, but imbealing them with a huge, almost mythic emotion. Kikuho captures how wondrous that can be, and the pain required to get there. John Powers reviewed the new film Kokuho.

Coming up, Morgan Neville tells us about making his latest documentary "Men on the Run" focusing on Paul McCartney's life and music after the breakup of the Beatles. This is fresh air

formation of his band Wings is now available on Prime Video. Our next guest is the film's director,

“Morgan Neville. He's made documentaries about Fred Rogers, Anthony Bourdain, and Orson Wells,”

as well as many prominent musicians, and as one an Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy. He spoke with fresh shares and rebuild an auto. Chances are Morgan Neville has made a documentary about music that you love. He won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Grammy for Best Music Film for 20 feet from Start-Up. His portrait of the backup singers whose voices helped to find rock and pop music, while remaining largely invisible. His latest film is about one of the most visible musicians,

Paul McCartney. If I hear someone damning Paul McCartney, I tend to agree with them. So whenever one was saying I broke up the Beatles, I was just overbearing, and all of that, I kind of bought into it. I thought that's, you know, the kind of bastard I am,

“relieved you in this kind of No Man's Land. But the truth, John had come in one day and said,”

he was leaving the Beatles. He said, "It's kind of exciting. It's like telling someone you want to divorce." The film "Man on the Run" covers a time in McCartney's life that isn't often the focus. His life around the breakup of the Beatles. He was newly married to Linda McCartney, and he was trying to figure out who he was as a musician and as a person. Without his partnership with John Lennon, without the band that defined him since he was a teenager. Morgan Neville got

access to previously unseen archival footage. We see McCartney in home movies with his young family. In the remote farmhouse in Scotland where they retreated, we see him working on his early post Beatles songs and on the road and on stage with his new band Wings. You may think you are

“ready to know a lot about the Beatles, but chances are you'll still learn from "Man on the Run"”

which features new interviews with McCartney, his daughters, John Sun, Sean O'Neillenon, and other heavyweights like Mick Jagger. Morgan Neville's other music documentary subjects include Farrell, Yoyama, Hank Williams, Bono, Keith Richards, and Johnny Cash. Morgan Neville, welcome to fresh air. Hi, great talking to you. Can you tell us about some of the archival materials that you had

access to? I mean, it's crazy how much rare footage there was, a lot of it never seen before.

Some home movies capture very intimate moments. Yeah, I mean, the good thing is that Paul married a photographer, you know, Linda McCartney. She not only took photos of everything, but they had home movie cameras and they documented a lot of their life. Even though they were living this rural farmer's life in Scotland, they sure took a lot of photos and footage of it and the texture of that life was just amazing to

kind of see what they created and live in that world. And it's part of the decision I made to not

have on camera interviews to do it all with audio was that the archive was so amazing that I just

felt like I could be immersive in it. Near the beginning of the film, you put text on the screen that reads Fall 1969. John Quitz, the Beatles, but nobody knows. Paul disappears. He is 27 years old. And that struck me as something, you know, we have to remind ourselves. The Beatles are the biggest band on the planet. And Paul is 27 years old. They've recorded all the music that is ever going to be Beatles music by that point. They're such young men. It's incredible to realize how much they

had done by that time. And Paul has only known being a Beatles. I mean, since he was, you know, 15, that was his life. So, you know, when you go through that, you know, it's hard to even imagine what it would have been like going through being a Beatles. You know, nobody had ever done it before a sense. You know, maybe Elvis. But the Beatles and what they did and how they shaped culture, you know, it was just unimaginable, you know, before a sense. And here he is a 27.

And he's the one that wanted to keep the band together. You know, John Lennon says it in the documentary. But Paul's the one that's really kind of pushing to get them to keep making music. And just in 1969, they record let it be. But that's January of 69. He gets married. They record api road. The, you know, in the spring and early summer, it comes out in August. He has a

So, when you're functioning like that and then suddenly you just hit a wall and it's over,

“there's just a sense of grief. And I think that is absolutely what Paul was dealing with. And that's”

the moment I went to begin the film, you know, which is Paul is just suddenly at a loss to know anything about himself. Who am I if I'm not a Beatles? And now he's a father and a husband and

and he says in the first interview he gives when they ask what you're going to do now that you're

not a Beatles and he said my only plan is to grow up and I thought well that's a great place to begin a film. Well, Paul ends up being the band member that announces that the band has broken up even though John was the first person to sort of announce it to the group internally. And he has to do it publicly because he wants to move on because he wants to make music and he ends up being the person like on paper that causes the breakup. Oh yeah, you know that was kind of the idea that

the public had that Paul was the one who sued the other Beatles and he quit the Beatles as the

headline say because he announced it first even though John had left the Beatles but, you know,

“just the PR side of it was a nightmare. And I think Paul hated having to go through that,”

you know, I mean this was an incredibly painful period of time, which is why I don't think he's talked about it much. As the band was breaking up, Paul and Linda moved to a small farmhouse in Scotland, let's hear a little bit from the film, which features archival footage of Paul and Linda singing and descriptions of the farm. If we're just as if we've been clonked into this new life,

and we just have to figure it out. And I say well this is gonna get lost. Just get away and go back

to the beginning. We'd had a baby, Mary, Linda had a five-year-old, so I adopted her and I started making music again. That's a scene from the film "Man on the Run." Yes, so is that this point where he started writing music again and what did Paul from the interview is? What did you learn from Paul about that process? It came starting to write on his own. I mean he had been writing Beatles song somewhat on his own, but he was writing them for the Beatles,

so now he wasn't. Now he was writing them for who? For Paul McCartney, well who's Paul McCartney as an artist, and you know he has an acoustic guitar and an upright piano, and so he's starting to figure this out. And really in the beginning he's just kind of experimenting and he would make these little charts of how to record songs, and sometimes he'd just be improvising. And just singing about what his life was, which was his new family, his wife, the farm, you know, and he

starts writing all of these songs, which as Paul says in the film, you know, it's the best form of therapy that is, because song is where you get to understand how you feel. The songs tell you and help you process how you're feeling. And so he ends up putting together this whole batch of songs very casually until, at the very end, he has the, to have for one more song, which is the song "Maybe I'm Amazed," which he goes into Abbey Road and does a proper job on,

“I guess, though he plays all the instruments himself still at Abbey Road, but I think he knew that”

song needed special treatment. Let's hear a little bit of that song. Here's "Maybe I'm Amazed." "Maybe I'm Amazed," which is the way I really need you.

"Maybe I'm Amazed," from Paul McCartney's solo album, released in 1970.

“What did Paul McCartney tell you about writing this song in particular? I think that there's something”

in that in the film. Yeah, I mean, the song is really a thank you to Linda, you know, because

Linda's always been a very two-dimensional character in the world, because she didn't give many

interviews at all, and she was vilified, you know, as Yoko was vilified. And it's interesting that, you know, John and Paul both married these very strong women who were artists in their own right, Linda was a photographer, who were a little older than them, who were divorced and already have children, and they start making families and music with them. So they become partners, because they needed some kind of ballast for themselves, and, you know, Linda becomes kind of the center

of his life, you know, both as his wife, as a musical collaborator, which is really her role as

“kind of his first audience. I think the public always felt so invested in Paul McCartney and John”

Lennon's relationship, and people often have the opinion that during the '70s, John and Paul were at odds, but your film complicates that, and reminds people that they were in touch throughout this time. Yeah, I mean, they were both at odds, but also connected, you know, I think, you know, obviously, at the beginning of the '70s, they're all just trying to separate. So, you know, there's a distance, they all, they all want to feel the difference, distance. And, and of course, then with the business

troubles, they are just increasingly tense with each other. And, you know, certainly in the press,

always trying to kind of pit them against each other, and, you know, Paul writes a song called

Too Many People on Ram, which has some kind of veiled references to, you know, people preaching practices, and, you know, kind of talking maybe about John's kind of lecturing and his kind of political activism in a way that's maybe too much. And, John comes back with a song called 'How to Sleep', which is not veiled, which is a very harsh, you know, almost kind of character assassination

“song. And, you know, saying the only thing you did was yesterday, and it's tough, but then you see,”

even at that moment, that they're still just almost fighting like brothers. You know, I used several clips in the film where even when they're fighting John refers to Paul's best friend, or as his brother, you know, that they had this connection that allowed them to do that. And they would still, you know, particularly as the business stuff started to settle down, they would get together more,

more, you know, Paul always had this deep connection to John, which I saw, you know, I didn't

know how Paul would be talking about John, and he loved talking about John. In fact, when I went to Paul's house for one of the interviews, I was led in into his house, and he, they said, "I'll be back in a while." And so I'm just kind of looking around Paul's living room. You're standing in Paul Martin's living room? Yeah, by myself. And I look on the wall, and there's a drawing by John, and Paul comes in, and I said, "I just noticed you've got this John drawing."

And so, let me show you something, and we go in the hallway, and there are many drawings by John. And he said, "I was sitting across from John when he drew some of these." And I, I just felt like this would be a good home for them here. And he just was staring at them with such love that I got the chills. You know, that, you know, John was his best friend. And we'll always be his best friend. And so to talk about John is to keep him alive and keep him in his heart. And, you know,

I think the complication of it is something that all of us, you know, try and unpack, but, but it's something that underneath everything, it has to be love. In other words, often criticism of Paul's solo albums and his work with wings, but there's also a sweet moment when Shonlin talks about how worn their copy in their house of McCartney's first solo album was. So, you know, even though you also feature in the documentary footage of John publicly, maybe criticizing

album got a lot of play in their house. Yeah, which I love that detail, you know, and I'm sure

“of it, you know, and vice versa for Paul with John's music. You know, I think they were always paying”

attention to what they were doing. And, you know, otherwise you see people asking John about wings, albums, and John, you know, becomes more generous with time and kind of understanding. And he

knows Paul's a musical genius that he has the capability of writing great music. Yeah, I mean,

one thing that's for sure through at the documentary, he's like, how prolific he is. It's crazy.

“It's almost like he just needs to, it's like constantly coming out of him. Yeah, I mean,”

puts out ten records and ten years. But on top of that, he's doing all kinds of side projects.

I mean, he is somebody who needs to be doing something. I asked him about that. You know,

I said, are you a workaholic? And what he said to me is, well, you don't work music, you play it. So, I think I'm a playaholic. And, and I think that's true. I mean, to this day, Paul McCartney's

“probably making music today, you know, and every day. I mean, that's what he still does because that's”

that's how he expresses himself. And, and I get that, you know, I, you know, if I was Paul McCartney, I'd make music every day too. Morgan Neville, thank you so much for talking with us. Absolutely great talking to you. Morgan Neville spoke with fresh airs and Maria Boldenado. His latest documentary, "Man on the Run" is available on Prime Video. His next film "Lorn" about "Lorn Michaels" comes out next month.

Fresh air weekend is produced by Theresa Madden. Fresh air is executive producer, is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is what you've been through. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Philis Myers, Roberta Chorock, and Maria Boldenado, Lauren Crenzel, Monek Nazareth, Thayah Challener, Sismny Kendi, Annabouman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nespere. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

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