Best Of: ‘Odyssey’ translator Emily Wilson / Actor Jon Bernthal

But does it strike the right balance of fun and darkness? We'll talk about it on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.

“Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.”

From WHYN Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. Christopher Nolan's new film The Odyssey is a box office hit, but classic scholar Emily Wilson, who translated Homer's poem from the original text, says the film script is a bismally written, lacking in emotional depth and character development. And she adds that our no-sex scenes and all the food looks horrible.

We need to have a protagonist with detailed, believable motivation. So the fact that these desires seem to be stripped from Odysseus. He doesn't seem to want food,

doesn't seem to want sex. What does he want?

Today Wilson talks about the joy and challenge of bringing the rich ancient text to life in translation. Also, we hear from actor John Bernthal, in place Minalias, King of Sparta in Nolan's

“The Odyssey, and the Punisher in the new Spider-Man movie. That's all coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.”

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Christopher Nolan's new film The Odyssey has earned critical praise and big box office returns.

This retelling of the classic story from ancient Greece features plenty of recognized stars. And it's also burnished the reputation of an established star in the world of classical scholarship. That's our guest today, Emily Wilson. In 2017, Wilson published her own translation of The Odyssey, a task that took six years to complete and had quite an impact. Wilson was the first woman to translate the Odyssey in New English,

though that's not the first thing she'd want you to know about her work. Her translation was widely hailed in reviews for its vibrant language and faithfulness to the original Greek text attributed to the poet Homer. Her translation sold thousands of copies and was added to high school in college curricula across the country. Wilson was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, and after she followed with the translation of the Iliad, a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Christopher Nolan has cited her translation in discussing his approach to the character of Odysseus in his new film. In a review, Wilson called Nolan's film, a Bismilliritten, and lacking in psychological, emotional, political, and ethical depth. Though she said it's still an event to celebrate because it's getting more people into theaters and interested in the classics. Emily Wilson is a professor of classical studies and chair of

the classics department at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of several books, including a new one coming out in September. It's a collection of essays introducing readers to the literature of ancient Greece and Rome and the challenges of translation and exploring some modern themes such as parallels between the hip-hop of Cardi B and Megan the Stallion and the comedies of Aristophanies in fifth century Athens. The book is titled Crossing the Wine Dark Sea.

Emily Wilson, welcome to fresh air. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, you're Zenia. I thought we would begin just because a lot of people know something about the Odyssey, but may not have thought about it in a long time. Just give us a quick summary of the plot. What is the story about? The story is set in the aftermath of the mythical Trojan War and it centers on the mythical Greek hero from Ithaca Odysseus and the final sequence of

his very long extended journey home. In Greek there's a word "nostoss" from which we get nostalgia, a story about a journey home from war. The Odyssey traces the story of how Odysseus escapes from

after many misadventures makes it back to Ithaca and after many more misadventures on Ithaca

reunites with his son tolemicus, his wife, Penelope and slaughtered the suitors of his wife. Okay, that's a good quick summary. In interviews before Christopher Nolan's film was released, you recommended that people should go and see it. You wrote a pretty tough review. Do you still

“think people should see it? Absolutely, I think people should see it. I think there's a lot to think”

about and talk about and I think it's a good time at the movies. It's a big spectacle. There's a lot to think about both in terms of what is this film saying about our times and about war, violence, and deception in our times and also what it's doing with the source material. I do think that it would be better if Nolan had hired a scriptwriter because that would have solved a lot of the issues,

but I also think the actors are amazing. It's his style study cost and they're doing that

absolute best with the script they were given. My actors are amazing. Not doing very much with character, right? I mean, the language was pretty tough. You're right. I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script. It's a family friendly audiovisual spectacle like an elaborate fourth of July. Fireworks display with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth. You also complain that there are no sex scenes in all the food. Yes. I mean, that's the laugh line,

but the serious point I was trying to get to with the laugh line about no sex, no food,

“is that I think if we have a quest narrative, whether it's in a poem, a novel or a movie,”

we need to have a protagonist with detailed believable motivation. He needs to want something.

So the fact that these desires seem to be stripped from Odysseus. He doesn't seem to want food,

doesn't seem to want sex. What does he want? He wants to persuade his guilt. And that seemed to me rather a thin motivation, especially compared to the rich layered characterisation of both Odysseus and the other characters in Homer, but also just compared to a good movie. I would like to have deeper characterisation in a film. I would like to care more. By the time I saw the film, I had spent a lot of time preparing for this interview. So my head was into the Odyssey in some of your work,

and I found the film disappointing, honestly, in one of the reasons was that the gods and goddesses in the Odyssey are really active creatures that intervene in human events. They are angry at times, and jealous, and capricious, and compassionate, and they're just kind of missing from this film, aren't they?

“They're kind of missing. I mean, there's a moment when Zendaya, who's sort of Athena,”

but maybe not, says to Matt Damon's Odysseus, who's complaining that the gods don't speak in a language that mortals can understand, and Zendaya says, "Who doesn't understand thunder, fire, a baby's cry. We understand those things." So implicitly, the gods are present, but I felt the film in of some ways wanted to have it both ways, that there's a noise in the soundtrack that's thunder, so of course, Zeus is there, there's Zeus's lore, which is repeatedly invoked, and yet

it's also very unclear. Do all we actually suppose to believe in Zeus, some Poseidon, or, and that is Calipso, a goddess, is sesia goddess. I would have liked a little bit more of the divine. Yeah, you get a sense in the poem, and I'd listen to your translation of a world that was really different, where people felt the gods. There weren't entities that they occasionally prayed to. They were out there all the time, and that was a very different kind of world.

Yeah, I mean, I love the alienness of the Homeric poems. I mean, they're both have this, in some ways, very familiar narrative about community and family and homecoming, and yet also things that are so alien, such as animal sacrifice, which is runs all the way through the Odyssey and the Alien. Well, we're not here to talk about the movie. I want to talk about this work that you do, which has gotten so, so much attention and praise. You know, you've been reading

ancient Greek for a long, long time. You've been teaching it to students for decades. Using many of the existing translations of the Odyssey, I was surprised until I read your book, because I didn't know how many times it had been translated. What made you want to try your own after teaching it for so long? Part of the answer was certainly informed by having taught it in translation, as well as lived with the original Greek poem for so long. I felt in my many

iterations of teaching the Odyssey and the Alien in translation, using multiple different 20th and 21st century translations, that there were things I wanted to get across to my students in the classroom that were very difficult to convey using the existing translations. One of those was the fact that the original Odyssey is a poem. It's in regular traditional meter designed for performance out loud. Most people in antiquity over many centuries

experienced it as performance poetry performed by rapists who had learned sections or the whole thing by heart and perform it rhythmically probably with musical accompaniment. So the lack of

and I was constantly saying to my students, "Remember it's a poem, but then we would read a

bit and it didn't sound much like a poem." And then the other thing is that, that the American poems are also proto-traumatic. They were composed before drama really existed, but they are their multivocal. They have these different characters who speak in different voices, have different perspectives, and I felt some of those proto-traumatic qualities, the multivocality, was very often flattened out in existing translations that I'd used with my students.

You know, I think you say in your new book at some point that translation is impossible. Translation of poetry is really impossible. I had this realization many decades ago when I was

looking at a poem by the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, and I knew enough Spanish to read the

Spanish in the English and it dawned on me, but you can't really translate poetry the same way you would translate, you know, a court deposition or a U.N. speech because poetry uses language in a very sophisticated way to convey images and emotions and impressions. And if you use those same words

“in a different language, it's not going to work. You have to kind of absorb the impact and reinvent it,”

right? Yes, poetry is, of course, the ultra-marked kind of language. It's language which draws attention to itself as language, and of course different poetic traditions mark language in different ways. So in the archaic period, the Homeric poetry uses dactinic hexameter, which is a regular traditional meter associated with narrative poetry. So in order to create the same effect, I use the meter that's traditional English, which is a ambient amateur, rather than using free verse or prose,

which is what most modern translators do. And then similarly, Homeric poetry is marked by other sound patterns, such as a literation and assnance. So again, if you're translating an add or a court deposition, you may not need to think about the sound effects in quite the same way as I think you do need to think about the sound effects, if you're translating a poem, especially one that's designed for all performance. Wow. So you really put yourself in a difficult position here.

You're not only taking these sophisticated ideas and images and stories, trying to put them in English, but you're doing it using mere an iamic pentameter. And you also use the same number of lines as the original poem? Yes. And they 12,000, I guess. Over 12,000, yes. So that was another thing that I thought on reflection about my experience in teaching the Odyssey in many different

translations was that as you said before, translation is very difficult. There's never a one

to one equivalent of this word in our cake Greek means exactly the same as this word in contemporary English. So you're always thinking maybe there were 10 different words I could use there. So the temptation is always to expand on the original, to use three or four words where the original might

“use only one. But then of course you're also betraying something that's essential also to the”

experience of the original, which is it's pacing. And the rapidity, the propulsive quality of please tell me more, tell me more, keep going. It's very much part of the experience of Homer and Greek. And I felt was diluted by the verbose quality of quite a lot of existing translations. Well, we're going to talk about this a little more. We just take a break here though. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Emily Wilson, she's a professor of classical studies

at the University of Pennsylvania, who has translated the Idiot and the Odyssey. Her new collection of essays is titled "Crossing the Wine Dark Sea." I'm Dave Davies and this is Fresh Air Weekend. On this season of Planet Money Summer School, we follow the money and not just the dollars. We're following the Yuan, the Naira, the Krona and more. Everyone's day this summer, we're taking you on a world tour to meet the people trying new solutions to old economic problems. Planet Money Summer School

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adaptation of the classic story of the Odyssey. We're speaking with University of Pennsylvania

Classics Professor Emily Wilson. Her translation of the Odyssey completed in 2017 was praised by critics and scholars for bringing the ancient text to life. Nolan cited her translation in discussing his approach to the character of Odysseus in his film. I wanted to hear some of what you do and it's interesting, you know, in your book you note that English translations of the Odyssey

“date back to 1611. I think and continue up in some of them are very recent within, you know,”

in the 21st century. So I thought we would take a passage from your passage. Maybe have you give us the reading and the original Greek. And then maybe talk about one of the existing translations and then give us a sense of what you did with your arm. So what passage would you like to read us? So in the book I discuss a great length, the challenges of translating what's

called the "Pro-M" of the Odyssey, which is the first few lines of the poem. So maybe we can

focus on that. And Ramoy Enneppe Musa, Paul Lutropon, Hoss Malapolla, Plankther, a paid troyess, he earned the throne of Persia. Paul Lutropon did an asti, a chinoe, a no, Paul Lutropon, Ponto, Pathanalg, a honk at a zoom, or an ocent, a pepsuken, a noston, a tyron. Alut hosted a ruse, ruse, to he eminospair, a toigars veteress in atastalia sinolonto, ne pioi, hoi cataboo superi ono se elioi o estion, autar hotoisin afeleta nostimon amar. Toun hama sen gas a, fuga ter dios, a pekai hemin.

And that's our guest classics professor Emily Wilson, reciting the first few lines of the Odyssey in the ancient Greek from memory, very well done.

You know, I've seen you do this a lot on tape, you are a real performer.

I love the performance, I read that, it's fun, yes. Do you picture yourself then like an actor on a stage, or do you picture yourself? I don't know, a couple thousand years ago in a hall doing this before a Greek audience. I mean, I want to try to channel the experience of being a rap sod and of course there's overlap between being the kind of archaic Greek poetry performer who would learn bits of homo by heart and perform them

and then being a translator that I'm trying to channel the experience of the original and then convey it for new audiences or listeners. All right, now those words that you just recited have been translated many, many times in English and other languages, of course, but I'm going to ask you to give us the translation of one that's well known and then we'll talk about how you translated in your own work. Yeah, so I'll read the Robert Fagels translation

“in Frivas because that was, I think is still a very popular translation, so I think it's worth”

continuing to talk about because it's a translation that many people read. Sing to me of the man, muse, the man of twists and turns, driven time and again, of course, once he had plundered the halode heights of Troy. Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds, many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea, fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home, but he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove, the recklessness of their own

ways destroyed them all, the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the sun and the sun God blotted out the day of their return. Launch out on his story, muse, Daunter of Zeus, start from where you will sing for our time too. Oh, that's Robert Fagels. Robert Fagels. Robert Fagels. I think it's very

“widely known translation, so what is in there that was added or modified from the Greek? So I think”

there are lots of very interesting choices and I'll just pick up on a couple. One is the choice to repeat the word 'sing' when the original verb in the start of the Odyssey in contrast to the Iliad where the verb invoking the muse is sing, Aida, in the Odyssey it's 'tell' it's 'epo' and 'n' 'epa'. So it starts in a way that is more casual or more ordinary level as we're building up towards what is in some ways a more domestic story than that of the Iliad. So I think there's

something quite striking about choosing to translate a 'tell' verb with a 'sing' verb. So there's a grandiosity to the language. They also think it's interesting how Fagels very, very often adds in metaphors, idioms one could say cliches that are common in contemporary American English that don't

time and again, of course the idea of launching out on the story as if the story is like a boat,

but none of those metaphors are there in the original Greek. And of course there's nothing

“wrong with adding in a lot of metaphors. It's a friendly gesture to the reader. But I think if you haven't”

read the original you may not quite realize how much his Fagels domesticizing and adding things to bring this ancient poem closer to the assumed metaphors and ways of thinking of his 20th century American leadership. Okay so let's hear what Emily Wilson did when you sat down. You took six years of creating this translation. This is the opening lines of the poem and I should also say that this is a rewrite, this is not my, not exactly the same as my published

2017 version because I'm actually in the process of doing it all again. So I'm going to do this

expanded version. You read falseness. Sorry but I was swallowing that. You can cut that out of you want to. I'm sorry. Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, who was lost so long and fled so far when he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy and how he saw and understood so many people. And so many places and suffered so much in his heart at sea as he was struggling to save his life and bring his men back home. But even so, despite his efforts he did not protect them.

Put fools. They died by their own willfulness. They ate the cattle of Hyperion, the Sun, who took away their chance of home. These events now tell us also, God us, daughter of Zeus, begin from anywhere. So one of the things that people have really, really noticed is that you describe Odysseus as a complicated man. And there are a few words in the original, which don't translate easily, a man of many turns. And so translators have done all kinds of things

with that. And saying he's complicated. Well, I mean you thought about this a lot. I know from reading your book, you spent a lot of time going back and forth. But it's what it does. It doesn't tell us exactly in what way he is complicated. And I guess what it's sort of saying is, hang in there. You're going to hear quite a story about this guy. Yes, I mean I see it in a way as a teaser for the poem to come. It peaks your interest because you're not told right away a very

“definitive thing about Odysseus. So I think it's a very much a choice on the part of the composer”

of this poem, not to use one of the more common epithets for Odysseus, such as polymedic, meaning crafty, or polymecness, meaning that he's skilled in technological inventions, like the wooden horse. But there's much more rare epithet, polyutroposs, which pagals translate says, twists a man of twists and turns. It suggests a twistiness, a turningous, a layeredness, which applies both to the protagonist and the poem and his journey. And we don't yet know

how many disguises or turns will this protagonist take? Or what will it look like? What will it sound like in the narrative of the poem? And kind of the many-faceted character of Odysseus, I guess, is one of the things that you really miss in the book. That's the shame. I mean, I think the movie is doing something in a way very brave by stripping away everything that we expect and, in my case, I certainly feel this way. Love about Odysseus in the poem, which is that he's

clever and multiple and smart and therefore a fascinating character, whereas the movie gives us a version of Mademona's Odysseus, who is not required to be smart, who instead he's just constantly troubled by anxiety about his role in the Trojan Holes and the Trojan War. Just talk a little bit about your background. You grew up in England, in a family of scholars, your sister B is a noted food writer. Tell us a little about your childhood. What kind of kid

were you? I was a real nerd and I'm still a real nerd, as you can probably guess. I spent so much

time my childhood reading. I was always very shy and introverted. At age eight, you had what you've

“described as a turning point in your life. Most of us don't have turning points at age eight. I think,”

maybe, you're going to play tell us about this. Yes, so I went to the local primary school and the teachers there were getting sick of doing nativity plays every year, so they wanted to mix it up and use their creativity. So they did a kids adaptation of the Odyssey and be was Helen of Troy. She was great and I got to be Athena and I got to make my own tinfoil helmet and we got to gouge out the eye of the headmaster who played Polyphemus. He was wonderfully game and let me

let us do it. It was such fun and for me as a very shy child, I realized that there was this wonderful outlet through the world of stories, especially through the world of Greek myths. So it turned

but I read all of the kids adaptations that I could get my hands on and then eventually I went to

“a high school where I could learn that in a Greek and so my life was made. Emily Wilson, thank you so much”

for speaking with us. Thank you so much. Emily Wilson is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania who translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. Her new collection of essays is titled Crossing the Wine Dark Sea. Now let's hear Tanya Mosley's interview with the actor John Bernthal, who plays Middle-Aus King of Sparta and Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Here's Tanya. My guest today, John Bernthal, has spent two decades playing the kind of men

you'd want to avoid and somehow he makes you root for them anyway. This summer he's in two major films, reprising his role as the Punisher and the upcoming Spider-Man movie, and starring in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. His breakout role in 2010 was a shame on the walking dead, a sheriff's deputy, protecting a band of survivors from zombies until he becomes the greater threat. He won an Emmy as Mikey, the brother whose ghost haunts every episode of the bear,

and this year he starred in the Netflix hit series, his and hers, and appeared on Broadway in Dog Day after noon. Bernthal says he couldn't have predicted any of this. He grew up in Washington, D.C., a baseball player better known for fighting the acting. And by his own telling, he was a kid headed in the wrong direction. An acting teacher saw something in him and sent him of all places to one of the world's toughest classical theater conservatories in Russia. He returned

transformed, co-founded a theater company, performed in dozens of stage productions, and spent

years grinding through sitcom guest spots in small film roles before his break finally came.

In the Odyssey, Bernthal makes his Christopher Nolan film debut, playing Minalias, King of Sparta. A few weeks into production. In the Moroccan desert, the cash shot the Trojan horse sequence, one of the film's most iconic scenes. Matt Damon's character and more than a dozen warriors cram inside the belly of the horse, waiting to invade Troy. The horse sits partially submerged, and Bernthal draws the short straw, neck deep, treading and freezing water that was supposed to

be heated. In word has it, as Bernthal stood there shivering, Nolan offered to pull him out, but he refused. John Bernthal, welcome to fresh air. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor. Why did you refuse to get out of that cold freezing water? I don't feel like I drew the

“short straw at all. I think anytime you know that you really care about something or you believe”

in something, if you have the opportunity to sort of be the one to say send me first. Let me show

you what I can do. I feel like our grit and our dedication is the one thing that we have control of in this world, and I love doing this. I love that I got to work for Chris and with Chris, and if you wanted to send somebody, I wanted to be that first one for sure. I think that's, you know, I would jump at that again. It's interesting Matt Damon said you pushing through that uncomfortable moment. I mean, like really, because it was the hardest role he said he's ever play,

just physically, and so to see you sit in that uncomfortable situation, actually pushed him to push through his discomfort. Tell us a little bit about that character, and the significance of you being submerged in that water for all of that time. Look, you know, so kind of Matt to say that, but like I said, I really wouldn't have had it any other way. You know, when you look at that film

“in the experience for the folks that made it, I remember my first day arriving there, just seeing”

the look in his eyes. He's a guy. I know he's a guy that I respect deeply. Yeah, for sure. And just, you know, the first words he said to me when I saw him on this beach with thousands of

extras in Morocco, right after traveling across the world, he just said, John, I've never seen anything

like this before. So me too, man, but if you haven't seen it, well, no one has. Well, you have had quite a busy few years, and the other film that's coming out is Spider-Man. You've played Frank Castle for 10 years, and you've been pretty protective of this particular role. Like you take up for him and all of his shortcomings as well, and you're bringing him to the Spider-Man movie, rated for kids. What did you, or did you negotiate or refuse to let them soften when it

comes to the Punisher in particular for this movie? Yeah, look, I think historically this is a character,

of a shootout between a bunch of different criminal figures from the underworld and his family and children were taken from him right when he got back from fighting overseas. He's a forced

“recon marine and in our version, a marine radar, and it brings up so many issues. But I think beyond”

just sort of the spiraling, really loss of his family and how he's reacting to that, we've really sort of delved into issues of PTSD and traumatic brain injury and the feeling with with with so many vets who come home, guys who are tip of the spear vets who really feel lost in wayward and don't know what to do next. And you know, look, I think I've said before, I was quite trepidacious and hesitant about sort of getting into the superhero world. It wasn't something

that I was looking to do, it wasn't something that I sought out. For a few reasons, I think, you know, the folks that I've respected the most in acting some of my heroes, not that I respect the most,

but a lot of my heroes sort of never went that way. And I think times have definitely changed,

but, you know, to have superpowers or to fly through the air, that just never, I think the characters that I'm really interested in are enormously grounded. I try to make them and I try to find things about them that I can deeply relate to or they take me down a path that scares me intensely. And so I have to go sort of explore that path. And with the Punisher in particular. Yeah, look, I've said before, there's there's no way that I could begin to take on that character

if I, if I wasn't a husband and a father first, first and foremost, and to fully and probably understand, you know, what the feeling of loving people on this earth and happily give my life for these people on my earth, on this earth, how would it feel that these people were taken

from me? And so I always want trying to live there. And he's not a character looking for the

light, he's not a character looking for things to get easier or for things to get better.

“Yet he's a human being. And I think all the time with my, you know, the rules that I play,”

I love opportunities to turn my back on the audience and I love to sort of take it too far to try to push myself to a place and push the audience to a place where they can no longer be with this character. But then try to win them back through showing the fragility of their heart, showing how broken-hearted they are, showing how much they're, how much pain they have, because I do think pain is a real adhesive. And I think it's the thing that really connects all of us.

We're listening to Tanya Mosley's interview with actor John Bernthall. He plays a minileus, king of Sparta, and Christopher Nolan's epically Odyssey. And he reprises his role as Frank Castle, the Punisher, and the new Spider-Man film. We'll hear more of their conversation after a short break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Are we doomed? Looks it? Big problems.

Nobody would, for absolutely what nuclear war, that's not way correct. How can we add friction? What the launch codes? Inside somebody's chest cavity,

“and you have to kill him to get them out.”

Are we doomed? Solving humanity's biggest threats. Part of the NPR network. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. The most compelling global stories straight to your ears. That's what we do at State of the World from NPR. Developments in Ukraine, Iran, with Ebola, but also how British beavers are fighting the effects of climate change. So we said the beavers can do at probably

fraction of the cost, certainly more sustainably. Listen to State of the World every weekday. On the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. Let's get back to Tanya Mosley's interview with actor John Bernthall. He returns as the Punisher in the latest Spider-Man film, brand new day. He plays Minileus, king of Sparta, and Christopher Nolan's epically Odyssey.

His breakout role was as Shane in the Walking Dead, and he won an Emmy for his role as Mikey in the Bear. He just ended his run on Broadway, starring alongside his longtime friend, Evan Moss backwack in the play Dog Day afternoon. I want to talk a little bit about the beginning so that we can kind of understand this a little bit about you because it's so clear. Your toughness has a history. You grew up in Washington, DC. One of three brothers

you went to Sid Will Friends, the Quaker School, where presidents have sent their children. It's kind of a place known for nonviolence and peace, right? Yeah. And by your own

telling, here you were in this school in fights and always chasing the most dangerous thing in the room.

It seems. What did that look like? Yeah, I think never fighting in school ever. You know, and I really think that sort of the values of that school, you know, we're really ingrained

and to really understand and believe in them. But there's no question that, you know, when I was a young, scared, confused, man, that I did, I would run into the run towards the most wild, the most dangerous, the crazy situation. I think for so many young men, it's about fear. It's about fear and it's about shame. There's a wonderful book that has meant so much to me and I really suggest everybody to read it, but especially I think young men, there's a book named

Towney by Andre Dubu, the third. It's incredible memoir, but it sort of, it really sort of tells

the story about how fear and shame can kind of lead to violence and how we sometimes become the very thing that we're scared of and I do have a real relationship, I think, with danger that I have been in some situations that could have gone many ways and I think to a certain point,

“I think that that's really important. I also am so grateful that I'm so far past that now and so far”

beyond that now and that mostly that I've found this work that all of the reckless abandoned and sort of wild things that I got into as a young man, I can bring that same energy into my work and hopefully I can bring these kinds of folks, I can bring a real humanity to these kinds of folks and through that same sort of reckless abandonment and wildness and I think that that is that's my favorite way of working. So you're a young man and you are in this school where

you're learning all these wonderful things about conflict resolution, I heard you talk about there's this Quaker ritual where you all would sit in silence and then when you had something that you needed to say, you could say it, can you describe that? Sure, I mean it's you know the way that Quaker's worship is so beautiful and you know there's no hierarchy and in that

“religion there's there's no priest, there's no rabbis, there's no ministers, there's just this”

fundamental belief that there's that a god and everyone and and that's something again that at the time you know I looked at those meeting for worships as just a time to either sleep or look at girls or you know. Is it in a room and it just requires everybody's silence you know every coach every security guard, everybody from buildings and grounds, every teacher, every administrator, every student, you would just sit in silence together and the ideas if that of God moves you,

you get up and you address the congregation, whatever comes from your heart and I fundamentally believe in that. Did you ever do that? I did, I did, I only did it once. I only did it once and it was actually strangely after I had gotten into an altercation outside of school and I talked

about I've never spoke about this before but there was a man who who came after my little brother

on a basketball court in D.C. and I ended up getting into an altercation with this man and and I spoke about it because I was so scared but I ended up having this just unbelievably profound sense of sorrow for this man and I really empathized with this man and I really saw a lot of myself in this man at that time and that was the only time I spoke and it was a profound experience because I didn't plan to speak, I didn't go in saying today, it was my day to speak and meeting for

worship, it really did just hit me in the moment which was strange for that point in my life. Your father was a corporate lawyer and is that right? He became that, yeah, at first, yeah. Your grandfather, a musician and a producer and your mom and brothers are also powerhouses. I mean, you come from a really impressive family and it sounds like discipline and accomplishment were a

“big part of the foundation of you guys and how would they describe your place in the family?”

Oh boy. I was definitely the black sheep, you know. I was definitely the one who got in trouble. I was definitely the one who, you're the middle boy. I was the middle boy. You know, both of my brothers are enormously sort of quote unquote successful. So my eldest brother, you know, right out of college got into the news. He was a producer. I think he won four Emmys by the time he was 22. He was the youngest producer on TV and then he started this small firm

which it was enormously successful. And my little brother, who just kind of was always that way. He was

an all-American football player and played basketball at Princeton and you know, went to medical school. My wife is a ICU trauma nurse. I was living with my wife and my little brother when he was in medical school and I was a starting struggling actor. He was just taking a job to get by. But, you know, my brother now is, you know, he's the head of oncology and orthopedics here at UCLA.

family home. You know, my parents didn't come from much. There was never a huge onus in my house

for achievement or they weren't pushing us. You know, we lived in DC. We had an open door policy. You know, my house was the house that, you know, if you were in trouble, you came to talk to my dad if you needed a bed. He came to my mom. You know, they were foster parents. They took and foster kids. The alchemy of how they did it was so extraordinary. And I have to tell you without it out. I am the failure of the family. I've done the least by far. And what they're

most proud of is how close we are. And, you know, my parents really put up with a lot with me.

“They really did. What do you think it was that, that had you driving towards that danger?”

For you as a young person, because I do think it plays into the way you're able to give such a real performance of these conflicted and violent people that you often portray. I don't know. I mean, honestly, it's a good question. You know, as a young man, I know I saw my older brother get picked on a good bit. And I know that I sort of made a choice

that that was never going to happen to me. And I know that I was really sort of fell into sort of

a natural protector role for my little brother. And then I think it just kind of got carried away. And I think that, again, you know, I think never underestimate the power of fear and shame, you know, and I think you can go from somebody who's very scared into somebody who is very scary. I think that that is just the sort of the natural progression of things,

“unfortunately, so much of the time. And then I think it's, you also then have a potential”

to go to the next place, which is, you know, you can start using that. You can come to a place where you're comfortable and you're confident and you're open to all kinds of thoughts. And there's, you're not led by fear. You're not led by shame. You're really, you become curious. And I do genuinely, please, that's where I am now. I'm really hungry and open and curious. And I don't really try not to judge folks. And I really do see that, you know, I've found

wisdom and grace and beauty in folks that a lot of people would label as some of the scariest people out there. Acting finds you, though, in a very interesting way, almost by accident. So you're this this hellian in Washington DC as you put it. You go to skid more college to play baseball. You walk into an intro acting class as a freshman thinking that you can kind of sleep through it. And the first assignment is for you to bring something you care about and talk about it in this

acting class. And you forgot, so you grab your catchers glove and you spin this story that your mother had given it to you on her deathbed, but she's alive and well. And do you remember how you felt

“after you gave this monologue and you looked around the room and you saw the responses of everybody?”

I was blown away. It was an out-of-body experience. I had told this story.

And I knew that it took that leap to sort of jump into something. It never dawned on me that

it even mattered whether it was true or not. In that room, I knew my back was against the wall. I know I hadn't brought anything I knew it was an enormously emotive room and a level of sort of openness with these young artists, these serious young theater artists that I was completely on familiar with. And I knew that I had to jump. And it was no different honestly than jumping into a street fight or jumping into a football game or jumping into a situation

in that, okay, there's only one thing to do here. If you're sparring in boxing, okay, let's go, you just take that step and you go. And I have from a young age been quite addicted to that step. And I knew that that step was necessary there. Even though I had no idea what I was doing. And I always come back to this word, reckless abandonment. You stop thinking. You get out of your own head and you just go forward and you try to connect with something bigger. And you know, I do remember

kind of coming back to myself with tears down my eyes. You know, with this story that I completely made up. But then also, noticing while I was telling the story, the sort of grip that the real palpable grip that I had over the other folks in the room. And I saw the emotion from them. And I knew that it was something special. And I knew that it was something something very powerful. And your teacher, your teacher though. Yes. She saw the talent in you.

But she called Bull. She knew that this was a lot of backers. Oh, my backer, yeah, her name's

almost name. And, and, and, and, and, and, yes, she saved my life. You know, I mean, she, she was as,

“you know, what I found that day with her was a level of vitality and, and a level of”

you know, I always sort of thought of the arts in, in my own sort of naive way that that that

it was a, it was a soft place. It was a, it was a place of just complete acceptance and, and, and not one of rigor and, and, and discipline and, and, and, and, and real vitality. And boy, did she, boy did she give it to me and, and, and sort of ripped me apart and, and, um, she saw something in you. She did. She said, yeah, her punishment was that I had auditioned for the play for the college, you know, production. So, you did that and you did that for a while. You started to really get into it.

You started to really feel it. And, um, her answer to you, as she saw your talent blossom, was that you needed to go to Russia, to the Moscow Art Theater School, one of the most demanding classical conservatories in the world. It is 1999. You don't speak a lick of,

“Russian, and you go, why, why Russia of all places? I think just like what you were talking”

about with, you know, Mr. Nolan in the beginning, I would have done anything on the told me to do.

I wanted this. I, it didn't take long. I auditioned for that play. And I, I remember telling my best friend, great zoomists that summer, I remember sitting down with him when we had, you know, we were, we were delivering pizzas at the beach and I remember telling him, man, this is what I, what I have to do. This is what I'm going to do. Like, there's no question. And I think number one, you know, this sort of private school kid from DC who thought he was all big and bad,

you know, getting out and really seeing the world and seeing Moscow, I think would be enormously humbling and, and, and just be a reality check that, that I needed. I think she also knew that I needed to kind of get away from all the people that I was with and that it was, you know,

“a group of young men that sort of create craved danger is much different than one man on his own,”

but mostly, you know, Russia is and was a place with a such a rich theatrical history where being an actor is such a serious profession. You can't do it without real rigorous training. There's, there's statues of actors, you know, in the city. It's, it's, it's much more akin to being a soldier. And it's that way because, because it's not taken for granted there. Absolutely. Because it's been, it's police. It's been censored. Of course. I mean, actors have

been, actors have been assassinated. Directors have been assassinated in their homes. The, the opportunity to, to, to get a group of people to gather publicly and put on a show was something that for so long was controlled by the state. It was controlled by the state for all of my teachers. So, you know, for them, you know, this was not a hobby. This was not something that you just got to do. It was such a privilege. It was such an honor. An honor that, that, that, that,

they performed in plays where had they been caught, they risked imprisonment, they risked assassination, putting on theatrical productions that Warren State sponsored was absolutely risking their life. And they did it anyway. All of them. It changed everything for me. It's really interesting that she saw in you that a place like Russia, because when, when we think about Russia, I mean, conditions are tough. It is rough. You went to Russia and you're like,

wait, I thought I was a tough guy. Oh, yeah. The brutality there was unlike anything I had ever seen, but so was the beauty. Look, you know, I had guns, multiple guns pulled on me, you know,

within my first week there. You know, I had, I saw, you know, people that were left in the street.

I saw a level of desperation, a wildness, of unbelievable disparity between those that have in those that do not, you know, people called it the Wild Wild West, but what? I mean, it was run by criminals. I mean, that's just what was going on there then. And you were yet going to school every day, kind of class every day. Yeah, you know, living in this tiny little place with, with four other people I slept on the floor. We turned the lights on. You know, the cockroaches would go everywhere.

You feel I'm climbing over you all at night. The buildings had curfews, so you, you know, you could only get in and out at certain times. And then if you needed to get out, you know, you'd throw the fire hose down and you'd repel down out of the windows. I mean, it was, it was a wild place in a wild time, but the most alive, the most impactful time of my life without a doubt. Well, John, Bernthal, I really thank you for your work. And I, I thank you for this conversation.

I appreciate you having me, I really do. John, Bernthal speaking with Tanya Mosley, he plays middle ass King of Sparta and Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, and he reprises his role as Frank Castle the Punisher in the new Spider-Man film.

director is Audrey Bentham, our engineer this week is Adam Stanisha Schesky.

“Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Philis Myers and Marie Baldonato,”

Lauren Crenzel, Monique Nazareth, the challenger, Susan Yacundi, and Abelman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler.

Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper.

“For Cherry Gross, Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davis.”

On NPR's Wildcard podcast, country legend Shenai Twain says she wants to live to be 200.

If I only think, oh, well, I'm only going to live to be 80. If that's my projection,

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