Will Sharpe imagines Mozart's day-to-day in 'Amadeus'

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Our guest is award-winning actor, writer, and director Will Sharp.

You may have first encountered him in the second season of the White Lotus, where he played

Ethan, a newly wealthy tech founder whose marriage may be unraveling. For that role, he received an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama. But Sharp had been noticed for his work already. He's been nominated for numerous BAFTAs, that's the UK equivalent of the Oscars and Emmys,

“for writing and creating shows like Flowers, a comedy about a family struggling with depression,”

grief, and loneliness. He received a BAFTA for acting in the BBC Netflix series, Jerry Haji. More recently, he's appeared in Lena Dunham series too much, and the Oscar-winning film, "A Real Pain." Now he stars as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in a new limited series, Amadeus, adapted from the 1979 stage play.

The play was also the basis of the 1984 film. It tells a fictionalized story of the rivalry between Mozart and the court composer Antonio Solieri, who's played by Paul Bettany. Solieri becomes increasingly consumed by envy after realizing Mozart possesses the musical

brilliance Solieri 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 Emperors Court. He meets Solieri at a court celebration. Solieri, 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 Solieri, the court composer. Yes, this is incredibly fortunate as the whole reason why it came to Vienna was to write for the Imperial Opera.

Well, well, there's a process to all of that.

I wouldn't dare be taught.

“You must at least be able to get me one meeting with the Emperor.”

It's a very bizarre what could be more important than this than meeting you. Well, I believe he's currently drawing up plans to ensure our nation's claim on the kingdom of Bavaria, I suppose that may be taking up some of his time. So she's just one meeting, I'll be forever in your debt of his. Will Sharpe, welcome to fresh air.

Hello, thanks for having me. What was it about this story that made you want to be part of it? I guess there was something exciting in our sort of very early conversations about the project of the possibility because the shape of this is a sort of five hour limited series. There's a little bit more space perhaps to sit with Amadeus and also sit with Constanza,

his wife and kind of see it from there, point of view. And I guess I was sort of interested by this idea of like Apocryphalase, certainly in the story of Amadeus, there's this sense that Mozart was someone for whom, like, music just fell out of the sky into his lap. But I was sort of curious to sort of try to imagine what does that actually look and feel

like in his day-to-day life, and to try and sort of humanize that somehow. I mean, the music does come to him, but it takes a toll like there's a burden to it. Yeah, I mean, I guess Paul and I would often sort of talk about... Paul Dickney, you played Celia. That's right.

We would often talk about the story, I guess, in trying to understand it in kind of like grounded terms or sort of playable terms, you'd often think of it as two brothers to a common father in God and Celiai feels neglected by God and that Mozart is getting all of the attention and is having sort of music shout upon him in spite of him being so much less pious than Celiai, who sort of like, immaculately behave to feel so in spite of that, he's

not getting what what he needs from God, he's not getting the attention he needs, whereas Amadeus, I think, feels really run ragged and kind of like a vessel for God's music

What did you do to prepare for this role?

“Did you learn about the historic figure, even if this story of Mozart and Celiai was always”

a reimagining? So I mean, the main preparation, I guess, was learning to play the piano pieces, because you did. You did. Yeah.

And that was like six, seven months of piano lessons and, you know, just drilling specifically the pieces on camera and then also, I guess, preparing for the conducting scenes where we tried to come up with a kind of hybrid language, where in the day it would have been

very metronomic, quite unexpressive and obviously now we're used to seeing, you know, slightly

more freeform-seeming, very expressive conducting and so we tried to find a language that blended the two.

“But I think, because so much of what is expressed in the show for my character in particular,”

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

about the story, but not overthinking, it was almost like a kind of meditative practice or something and then I did find that listening to Mozart's music was an incredibly helpful way of just kind of sinking into it and it's not like a resource that you normally have and even just thinking about the sheer range of this music but also of his seemingly of his personality ways, it's just very light and funny and playful at one end and super

grand and dark and operatic, the other and try to marry all of that into one person. Found just kind of, you know, if I had an hour or three walking around Budapest with that in my ears was quite helpful too. There's part of this 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 would 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 in as we shot just trying to get to the

bottom I think of who he was and what his predicament was I guess and more and more felt like you know enjoyable it 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 him but definitely wanted to play him slightly other and he doesn't understand social norms or can't 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 a kind of ordinary normal way but through his music he's expressing a lot of what he isn't

“able to say day-to-day and so I guess that's why those sequences felt quite important in terms”

of understanding him as a character and also understanding his story. In this series we meet Mozart

when he's around 25 years old and it occurred to me that you got your first bathed enomination

for your first film Blackpond when you were around that age. What were you feeling at that age about like that acclaim or did you feel pressure or maybe you didn't I mean maybe you're kind of you know brazen like the 25 year olds most are we heard at the beginning of this piece. I definitely feel like in your early sort of endeavors there's like an innocence that is kind of hard to recapture you know maybe gain some wisdom in exchange but I mean even on flowers which was

kind of my first proper grown-up commission you know by Channel 4 there was definitely a sense of kind of like you didn't know what could go wrong or what was in your way and so there's like a real purity to how you approach it and I feel like you know in in the best moments you maybe you've managed to recapture a sort of an echo of that but I don't think it's a place you

and pure I think about those early early endeavors for any artist. It's like unguarded yeah yeah

and so you're not even I suppose that you know it's your question specifically you're not even thinking about what the acclaim might be or what the end result is that's just like a happy surprise if it happens and it definitely was a complete shock yeah I want to ask you about the series the white lotus you starred in season two the one that takes place in Italy and you play Ethan Spiller who just got super rich as a tech bro and he's spending his vacation with his wife

Harper played by Arby Plaza and his college friend and his friend's wife I want to play a scene

from the show it's near the beginning here your character and Aubrey Plaza's character have been

spending time with this other couple it's clear that Harper doesn't like them but she says she's trying to make nice they're talking in bed in their hotel room. Thanks for making more of an effort I mean yeah they kind of live in a bubble but they're fun right they don't vote even I know what the f*** they don't read the news they don't read so what do they even talk about does that what happens when you're rich for too long your brain just atrophies I mean they seem

happy no way it's a front it's good to have you know diverse friends I guess

“yeah I think we're their diverse friends they're white passing diverse friends yeah you're right”

that's a scene from the white lotus I like this scene because it reminds me that part of what's

happening with this couple is that they're newly rich and they're kind of uncomfortable with the opulence around them and this super privileged white couple that they're spending all this time with you know this story of these couples then become a lot about marriage and trust and in fidelity but it's you know a part of it is the fact that they both feel like outsiders for sure and I guess there was something something interesting about playing someone who

part of it like in a conflict maybe was that he's sort of worried that he's becoming the thing that he hates or the thing that he's judged is he sort of morphing into that maybe and it's impossible not to be aware I guess of like of my ethnicity in the playing of it also not that it's super loud in the mix but you know just I guess I had an awareness of how he might feel as an Asian American man in that context if that makes sense and you're a director and

creator of television shows yourself and you said that you have this privilege of working with other directors and creators who are really focused and really retain control of their projects directors like Mike White you said that he's a model for you about how to keep control of a

“shows voice while also giving audiences what they want what do you mean by that yeah I think Mike is just”

so precise in his tone and in his writing and how he kind of crafts anything that he's you know he's the author of it feels very deliberate and and I'm that is something that I admire and something that I respect but also he's managed to make a show that feels elevated and kind of true to him as a creator but has reached a really wide audience you know like the White Lotus is hugely watched and that also is something that I admire. 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 Felver who also co-created the series and writes the music for the show Megan Stalker plays the New Yorker moving to London after a breakup and she meets your character Felix who's a musician and recovering addict the characters meet cute and they

“fall in love but their relationship isn't easy how would you describe your character Felix?”

Felix I guess like he just seemed like somebody who 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

can get in the way if you're present day one and how you know can you get beyond the baggage

“that you carry with you and each of those characters have you know do have baggage and”

others are contending with it. I want to play a clip from too much in this scene Megan Stalker'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. I feel like I should be wearing it harder something like a beanie of course. You probably haven't seen me like this before but I actually feel pretty like weird like I can't feel a bit busy you know what I mean I'm kind of tight like white noisy you know this yeah maybe you look like you want to pass out or get in poly like these aren't really my people okay well I will just go home I can eat Tuesdays or something. I don't know I feel so weirdly loyal because

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 selves. Yes over and out I agree you Mr Felix. That's being from the netflix show too much. Lena Dunham said that she loved having you on set not only because of your acting but because you're also a writer or 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 Dunham

“on this show and on your character? I mean I think that's very generous of her to say but she's sort of”

that agent involved with 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 of formidable way and sometimes we'd have like a very off-hand 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 ramen thing he his name was Felix ramen in the show and I think I just was like there is absolutely

no way if his name was Felix ramen and his half Japanese and he went to that kind of school that he wouldn't be called Felix ramen this is absolutely no way that he wouldn't be called Felix ramen. Now into much your father is played by Stephen Fry the British actor writer and comedian and he's someone who got his start at Cambridge University in the comedy troupe Footlights he was in the group in the 80s with people like Eulori and Emma Thompson

and you went to Cambridge University and joined Footlights what did Stephen Fry mean to you as a kid? I mean he was definitely you know like a huge comedy icon and was you know whether be Fry and Lorry the sketch show or Blackadder you know was somebody I really enjoyed watching as a kid and maybe in some way would have been you know one of the reasons why so or maybe if if I'm at this university being a partner's comedy group could be a fun thing to do but he's also

just like he's just an incredible polymath how prolific he is and how many different fields

“and how thoughtfully he talks about so many different subjects I think he's kind of like”

like just an extraordinary figure he's an extraordinary figure and yet you know one set so sort of just humble and you know just like another person in the cast and kind of mocking in the rehearsals and notice lines very professional and so yeah I was hugely excited to work with Stephen and to have met him. You also have this great scene that we couldn't use because there's too much cursing in it with the Richard Eid. Megan Stalker's character's boss but turns out his daughter

had dated you back in boarding school but he's drunk and he realizes it's you and it's this funny kind of play between the two of you. Yeah I mean that was a lot of fun. I mean I love to film you know with nail and I growing up in the way that kind of I suppose was hilarious but also

remember like watching with nail and I watching Harold and Mord and being there you know how

Ashby's films and all those kinds of movies that seem to blend different feelings and tones and so to work with him similarly it was like kind of pinched me but also to get to just have a really sloppy messy fight with him. He is actually quite strong. He grabbed your leg at one point. Yeah. He doesn't seem to like it. Yeah. My guess is after writer and director will sharp. He stars in the new limited series Amadeus the series originally aired in the UK and is now available

on stars. More after a break this is fresh air. Dr. Eric Topal says health influencers make big claims about longevity but he's offering us a reality check. We can accept that we're going to age but we don't have to accept heart disease and cancer or neurodegenerative disease. Straight talk about how to grow old and stay healthy. That's on the Ted Radio Hour podcast wasn't on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air. I'm Ann Marie

Baldenado back with award-winning actor writer and director will sharp. He stars in the new limited series Amadeus. His other films and series include a real pain, the white lotus, too much, Jerry Haji, the electric life of Louis Wayne and flowers. 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 oural for me like the sound of train stations in Tokyo or like what near my grandma's house you just turn 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. Sound is so amazing. Yeah but it does feel like

a lot of it's quite an arrow 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 would only get when I've been one of gone back to Japan and it's a weird thing where

“I think a lot of 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 or how to identify and so 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 guy's in 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

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 read that when you're a kid you're already into sketch comedy and you would stay up late and watch sketch shows. Was this when you're in Japan? What were you watching? I mean, various shows that I feel like probably have not aged well, but like not quite that but maybe there's sort of a quick like there were lots of different sketch shows like

downtown drifters tunnels was another one and just these are British shows. No these are Japanese like really silly silly silly comedy shows and almost built into it was like can you make each other break and that was part of the fun was wondering which comedian was going to start laughing and

“then also sometimes some really low key sort of situational sketches where it might be about a boy”

whose parents had divorced and makes friends with a lizard in a park but the both played by just grown men so there's like a man sat on a bench and he's just sort of talking to this lizard about his parents divorce and really the only funny thing about it is that somebody is wearing a bright green lizard costume but yeah I mean I did enjoy that and I really remember really loving the feeling of just being made to laugh hysterically and you move back to England how old were you

at that point was it hard to adjust back? I was eight um yes it was it was I think probably more

on that in some way you know um and yeah definitely was an adjustment and I definitely felt

yeah like somebody trying to learn how to fit in and trying to learn yeah like new ways of communicating and I've said this before as well but I've weirdly because I enjoyed creative writing exercises and I had by that age maybe started to feel like oh if there's like a poetry homework assignment I seem to get good feedback on that I sort of had found a confidence in writing and so I felt like weirdly there was um something quite empowering about being able to write the language feeling

sort of like I could write it well and was confident writing it and that was of way of almost like grounding myself in the country a little bit even if I felt like socially I didn't quite know how to communicate. Was writing kind of your first love like is that the thing that you thought you were gonna do? I don't know if I ever felt like it was possible to pursue it as a vocation because my

parents do not come from creative backgrounds and I was never really anywhere near that world you know

my dad was really into books and I could I could tell that I enjoyed it. I didn't really have a sense that acting or comedy was a thing until quite a bit later I think at school in my teens

“maybe and I think I remember having some sort of version of a conversation with my mom where I was”

like I don't really understand the big deal with acting like isn't it just sort of pretending and she was like we'll do it then. I know it's like okay. So when do you think you really decided that it was going to be acting or being an entertainment that that was what you wanted to do? Was it when you're in high school and boarding school or was it when you got to college at Cambridge? I think at school I really didn't have a sense that it was possible and you know had an

interest in it and you wrote a play and some sort of slightly embarrassingly rush more ask kind of a moment but like maybe towards the end of university you would see some people going on to doing it as professionally and that made it feel like maybe it's possible. I mean maybe to be honest with you probably when Tom Kingsley and I we made a short film he was working as a runner at an advertising agency and I was playing a junior doctor in his soap in a sort of continuing

medical drama. So this was after you had both graduated from campus after years. Yeah we worked together at university and we made a short film together went to Japan he borrowed a prosumer camera from his advertising agency I had two weeks off this soap and we sort of made a short film together and then his boss watched it and was like oh that's great what if I gave you 50 grand to make a feature film and we of course were like oh my god that's so much money could we have a do it

and had sort of been given permission to imagine that it was possible to do that and so I went off and wrote the script and we started trying to figure out how we could do it 50 grand then his

boss came back from a sabbatical and basically just said I've changed my mind why would I give

you 50 grand that's insane but by then we were so in mode and had sort of pictured it that we had the momentum and so we started trying to raise the money ourselves you know writing to people we'd work for friends parents that we knew at wealthy and all of that and managed to raise

“20 grand and made that feature film just in sort of complete innocence and then after that I think”

were considered to be sort of legit filmmakers and I feel like probably until we had done that maybe there was like a precariousness or at least like a fragility in sort of like would you feel slightly fraudulent identifying as someone who's doing that unit for a job. Going back to your time at university you tried out for a footlights the comedy troupe at Cambridge and you eventually became president but what were some of your early sketches like.

Oh man I think that was quite great. I tried to find some they do not exist on you wouldn't find them on the internet trying to remember I feel like there was one where I was like a bunch of crayons and I played the white crayon who was annoyed that no one was using him. I think that

“did a song about like something to do with the Smith some kind of Morrissey parody. I think it was”

just making fun of his lyrics. I feel like it was something like something about bicycle that has a basket and I ask it or you a basket also I can't remember something like that. Well let's take a short break and then we'll talk some more my guess is after writer and director

now available on stars. More after a break this is fresh air. This is fresh air. I'm Ann Marie

Baldenado back with award-winning actor writer and director will sharp. He stars in the new limited series Amadeus. His other films and series include a real pain the white lotus too much Jerry Haji the electric life of Louis Wayne and flowers. I want to ask you about the 2024 film a real pain Jessie Eisenberg wrote directed and starred in the film it's about two cousins who used to be close but aren't anymore they're played by Jessie Eisenberg and Karen 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 think when your character makes his first appearance in the film”

it took me a moment to realize that it was you when you're starting conversations with Jessie Eisenberg why did he reach out to you about this role and why were you drawn to it? I mean I was drawn to it simply because I thought the script was sort of immaculate I thought it was so clear what the tone was he was trying to strike and the kind of line he was trying to walk I thought it was very precisely drawn and I understood what he was trying to say even though it was something quite nuanced

and was a fan of his and from the first meeting with him felt like a you know creative

and excitement from talking with him and so I just wanted to be a part of that and it really felt like you know a small indie film when we were making it and obviously I believed in it creatively but I had no sense of like that it would go all the way to Oscars. Now everyone that you're very specific about what accent you wanted to use for James then you had tried a few different ways of playing him what were you trying to get out with this character and the British accent

that you ended up going with? Well so I mean from the very early conversations Jessie was really clearly didn't want James to be obnoxious in any way everything he does and says is so well meaning he genuinely is passionate about this history and just wants to kind of make for a good trip for everyone and to you know educate them where he can and he was written as a kind of like fairly

“like down the line Oxbridge grad and then we did the read through I think the day before we”

started filming and something about it I was like I feel like it's somehow coming out more condescending than it should on the page and I wondered if it was to do with the accent and so that evening I started trying it out in a northern sort of you know like Sheffield softer kind of voice and I was thinking of this presenter Brian Cox in the UK different to the succession actor who he sort of does shows about the universe and space and he has this very infectious

enthusiasm and so I was sending Jessie voice notes of James with that voice and he's immediately seemed excited about it and was like let's do that I think that really works and he also I think he liked you know with the film being about what it is and that it immediately does like a sort

“of specificity to James where if he comes from that part of the world because he has the accent”

but he looks like how I look like immediately there's like a hinterland that you're curious about you know how did your family end up in that town and so from that point on it felt like yeah he just sort of clicked. 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 Colkins 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 enter Benji played by Kieran Colkins speaks first. 80 years ago we would have been herded 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 rising 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 you compare in your own life. I don't feel guilt. No not should you

laser so peppered 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 Colkins character questions the tour and questions what this group is doing. What was it like filming those scenes with Kieran Colkins? I would think it's very heightened. Yeah you know he's an electric performer and it was kind

“of fun and like I remember on that scene Jesse as he always did came in with a very specific plan”

about how to shoot it and where everyone would be and how it was going to be choreographed because you know we're on a train so the options are limited and Kieran was like hang on a minute why would I stand there or let's rehearse it let's see what happens and so even before we'd started rolling in a kind of metadromatic 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 of 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 worried this little unit going on this journey and it's just exciting to act opposite Kieran's and 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's suit at the character if I him to have that energy what are the things I find so moving about a real pain is the way it explores generational trauma like what the characters in that scene we just heard a weird character calls guilt the guilt that some descendants of all cost survivors can carry it's almost that feeling of how can I complain about my own life how can I struggle with depression or unhappiness when my relatives live through one of the most

horrific tragedies in history and wondering if that you know what you thought about that idea of that guilt and that kind of unresolved pain well I guess that sort of central to the movie you know is that idea of like if you hold your own pain or you know grievances in modern

“the relatively comfortable seeming modern day against like the sheer scale of that historic”

trauma can you can put it almost and there was something about you know we visited a real

concentration camp my darling in the filming of the movie and it was my first time in a concentration

camp and I really respected how Jesse chose to shoot those scenes you know very simply just putting a camera up and then we just passed through and observe the space and if you've not been to a place like that is hard to sort of put into words it's like sort of looking into an abyss or something you can't fathom how sort of humanity could be capable of such atrocities and when you're sort of holding any sort of like personal struggle up against the scale of

that historic trauma is kind of like what does that how do you get your head around that I suppose well will sharp thank you so much for joining us thank you having me there's a pleasure will sharp stars in the new limited series Amadeus which is available on stars coming up David Biancoly reviews a new gardening show hosted by comedian Zach Galifonakis this is fresh air this is fresh air on earth day Netflix launched a six-part series called this is a gardening show

it's hosted by Zach Galifonakis the comedic actor best known for the hangover films the TV series baskets and his own a surmic talk show between two ferns our TV critic David Biancoly says that while this series is just as funny and delightful as you might expect it's also surprisingly informative and even serious here's his review this is a food gardening show with your host Zach gasp of an asktie you don't expect Zach Galifonakis to take himself seriously in

his new Netflix series and for the most part he doesn't this is a gardening show is loaded with botch takes tossaway assigns and truly terrible jokes even knock knock jokes he clearly has fun and so do his guests one segment in each episode has him interviewing kids at a grade school

around gardening fruits and vegetables but invariably veer off into uncharted conversational

“territory the host proved his ad lib prowess as an interviewer on his between two ferns show”

but the object there was to make his guests intentionally uncomfortable on this show whether he's

talking to farmers horticultural experts or little kids galifonakis himself always ends up being

the butt of the joke here he is chatting with a series of kids as he tours their school garden somehow the conversational topics shift from ghost peppers to the movie school of rock these old ghost peppers are they haunted well then why did they call him ghost peppers because they'll wear your hot the most ghost aren't known for being hot if you could be anything in the world that you wanted to be what would you be i want to be about you don't mean a veteran you mean a

veteran veterinarian yeah yeah well boy so many works and a show works in a show yeah

“oh like show business stuff yeah like have you ever seen school work who's that with jacklock”

never heard that guy he's one of my favorite actors good for him no I forced to go to the

line with Ryan Reynolds it'd be nice to meet an actor one day yeah it would be nice to meet Ryan Reynolds and jacklock yeah you ever heard of the buzz the size that galifonakis yeah what do you think of that guy it's not my fault hmm the six episodes in this first season i'm hoping there will be more or devoted to apples tomatoes foraging root vegetables corn and compost Zach who lives in British Columbia has been gardening for some 25 years this is a gardening show was filmed on Vancouver

Island and every farmer he visits is a true character especially Murray who's been growing corn for about half a century and easily handles any question thrown at him even when Zach brings up the phenomenon of crop circles anybody ever come in here try to do a crop circle no any of it with a center point in a rope and like the crop circle you don't think their aliens no they're just drunk kids doing it no old people with a who's a board you've probably seen it on TV and there

we need old people by that one like our age our age what do you look seven years in the same episode on corn an actual food archaeologist is brought in and while you're likely to

learn something it's always with a smile food is one of the topics that i study in archaeology

and we began to find corn in an ancient village site that we were working at in Chiapas Mexico we took samples of that carbonized corn and sent it to a radio carbon laboratory how old was it over three thousand years old wow older than Murray the director of this is a gardening show is Brooke Linder who also proved his skill at mixing different topics and comic tones in the live Netflix talk show everybody's live with john malini these gardening shows rely on

a basket of tricks they use time lapse photography to capture both growth and decay they use the segments with kids for pure comedy gallophonacus also visits different farms and farmers to sample their wares and every time he bites into an heirloom tomato or a homegrown carrot he pronounces it the best one he's ever tasted and i don't think he's kidding in the course of these compact 15 to 16 minute episodes he learns how to graphed apple trees make richer compost and generally how to

self sustain the future is a grayion he says in every episode and not as a punchline and he points out how happy the Canadian farmers all seem to be even Murray as well as how much tastier the locally grown fruits and vegetables are in several spots watching this is a gardening show i became nostalgic for a past i'd almost forgotten when i was a little kid my uncle Tom had a pharmacized backyard where he grew cherries and tomatoes and harvested seeds from his hottest

peppers each year to keep growing even hotter ones he also could walk through the nearby forests

“and confidently forage many types of wild mushrooms leaving the poisonous ones behind i also remember”

a corn farm in ohio were on harvest day the farm would set up boiling cauldrons in the fields and invite the public you could go there pick ears right off the stalks shuck and boil them on the spot and eat what i still remember was the best corn i ever had zack elephant actus in his new series spreads that kind of joy for eating as well as gardening but he issues a dire warning too

lot more bleak that's a bitter pill to swallow but this is a gardening show serves it up persuasively

“and deliciously David B. and Koli reviewed this is a gardening show”

tomorrow on fresh air tech writer Joana Stern she spent a year relying on AI to do everything in her

life that AI could do for her like diagnosing her mammogram responding to messages folding her

“t-shirts and serving as a boyfriend she'll tell us what she learned about AI's current capabilities”

i hope you can join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews

follow us on instagram at npr fresh air fresh air's executive producer is Sam Brigger

“our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham our engineer today is Adam Stanishewski”

our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by phyllis miars Lauren Crenzel Theresa Madden Monique Nazareth they are challenger Susan Yucundi and abalman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler our digital media producer is Molly C. B. Nesberg Roberta Cherock directs the show for Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley I'm Ann Marie Baldenado