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Will Sharpe
Will is wearing a coat in wool by GIVENCHY. Polo in recycled cashmere by LORO PIANAPhotography by Kingsley Ifill, Styling by Molly Shillingford

50 Questions With Will Sharpe

As the Oscar-buzzed comedy A Real Pain is released in cinemas, the actor, writer and director (and The White Lotus star) takes AnOther’s 50 Questions

Lead ImageWill is wearing a coat in wool by GIVENCHY. Polo in recycled cashmere by LORO PIANAPhotography by Kingsley Ifill, Styling by Molly Shillingford

Will Sharpe has a thing about not being heard. That’s nice, I say, before moving swiftly on to the next question: such are the time-pressed realities of the 50 Questions format, which calls upon the finest minds from the creative spheres to spill their truths as bite-sized, readily digestible nuggets – a task that, by our own admission, neither of us is very good at.

Where Sharpe most definitely has been heard is in his increasingly high-profile work as a triple-threat actor, writer and director. The London-born, Tokyo-raised talent found his voice with one of the decade’s most distinctive comedies, Flowers, before winning acclaim for his roles in the likes of Giri/Haji and The White Lotus. Now he’s starring opposite Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in the Oscar-buzzed comedy A Real Pain, in which he plays a Yorkshire-born tour guide chaperoning two American cousins on a trip through Poland to honour their late gran, an Auschwitz survivor. It’s another sharply judged turn from an actor who brings unexpected pathos to everything he does.

Below, Will Sharpe answers AnOther’s 50 Questions.

1. Can you sum up your character, James, in three words? Earnest, passionate, informed.

2. Can you sum up this film in three words? A real pain.

3. When is the last time you felt like a tourist? I live in London and there are times, particularly at night around the river, where you can tap into the romance of the city and feel like you’re experiencing it like a tourist might.

4. What’s an accent you can do well? My own.

5. And one you can’t? Scouse.

6. How about Yorkshire? I felt relatively comfortable with that; my other half is from the Midlands so some of my vowels have flattened out anyway. The soundman on the film was from Sheffield. So I was like, “OK, this is perfect, you can be the Sheffield police.”

7. Did you get arrested? I mean, I’d go to him sometimes [to check] but he seemed happy, yeah.

8. What’s the most useful bit of feedback you’ve received? Just before I made Flowers, there was one producer who asked, “Do you actually want to make this? Because it feels like you’re trying to second guess what we want, and it’s not what you want to say.” He told me to pitch the show I genuinely wanted to make. So I took that advice away and tried to write very instinctually [with Flowers].

9. Are you more of a David or a Benji in real life? What is brilliant about the film is that you can almost think of them as two parts of a single psyche. I feel like I’ve been both at different times.

10. What’s a treasured early memory? Riding a bike in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, where I grew up.

11. Where do you feel happiest? In the company of my family.

12. If you didn’t live in London, where would you live? Maybe Italy? My partner’s family are from Abruzzo, but I don’t know if I’d ever get as far as that.

13. What’s your favourite thing about London? The variety. I also like the feeling of sewing together different parts of London, when you walk from one area to another. That’s satisfying.

14. What’s the best thing about having roots in two places? It gives you a sort of open-mindedness when it comes to other cultures and other places because you don’t feel completely rooted anywhere.

15. What was the weirdest thing about coming to England? The nuances of how people communicate in social interactions and adjusting to that.

16. What was the best thing about studying at Cambridge? The comedy scene.

17. What’s the first film you remember seeing? The Land Before Time.

18. What’s a film that made you want to be a filmmaker? I’ll pick three. The Elephant Man, which was my gateway to David Lynch. Withnail and I is hilarious but also made me cry. It’s got that mix of tenderness and humour and I definitely felt its influence for a while. The other is a Japanese film called The Taste of Tea, which is a really mad movie with some extraordinary, surreal images, but at its heart, it’s a portrait of a family living in rural Japan.

19. What’s the best scene you’ve ever played in? A dinner scene in the final episode of Flowers. I just remember really feeling the warmth of that company of people.

20. What’s a perfect screenplay? I know I’m here to promote it but I want to say A Real Pain. The tone was so clear and I really felt what Jesse was trying to say. The questions he was asking were often quite complex [and] abstract, but it was very funny, very tender. 

What’s a cinematic trope that needs to die? “The ‘grand gesture’ in romcoms, where the person has to redeem themselves by doing some kind of big public declaration of their love” – Will Sharpe

21. What’s a cinematic trope that needs to die? The ‘grand gesture’ in romcoms, where the person has to redeem themselves by doing some kind of big public declaration of their love.

22. Who’s a filmmaker you admire? Hirokazu Kore-eda. He often writes about makeshift families; people who find themselves in a family dynamic even if they aren’t literally family. There’s a warmth and tenderness [to his work], but there’s a sense of humour as well.

23. What makes you angry? Not feeling like I’m being heard.

24. Who did you want to win Succession? In a sort of dramaturgical way, I think the ‘right’ person won because he got what he wanted but not in a way that he wanted to get it.

25. Who’s the best character in the show? Kieran [Culkin]’s character is extraordinary. The amount of humanity he brings to Roman is key to why he became such an engaging human to watch. But the strength of that show was the ensemble part of it, how rich every character was and how much everyone brought to their parts.

26. What’s a song that puts you in a good mood? May Ninth by Khruangbin.

27. What’s a band from your teenage years that holds up now? I had a phase a few weeks ago of listening to some Weezer. That holds up pretty well.

28. I’ve got a couple of tickets going spare for the Oasis comeback. Interested? Sure, why not. I like the new Blur album, though.

29. Who’s the coolest person you know? My other half is genuinely cooler than I am. She makes me feel quite uncool.

30. Who would you like to apologise to? My younger self. For beating up on myself too much.

31. What do you miss about the 90s? The sketch shows. The Fast Show, Vic [Reeves] and Bob [Mortimer] …

32. What do you miss about the 2000s? What was the 00s? It’s quite abstract in my head. I definitely don’t miss skinny jeans, though.

33. What’s the last thing you took a photo of? My daughter eating French fries under the table.

34. What keeps you hooked to your phone? Spellbee.

35. What do you collect? I like to collect deliberately shit magnets from places I’ve been.

36. Do you have a favourite? No.

37. What’s your favourite emoji? The swirly star one. That’s got quite a nice energy to it.

38. What’s your worst habit? I recently gave up smoking. I’m not actually sure if I should share that.

39. What’s the first thing you did when you woke up this morning? Er … went for a piss?

40. What’s one food you could eat every day and never get tired of? Japanese food.

What was the weirdest thing about coming to England? “The nuances of how people communicate in social interactions” – Will Sharpe 

41. Can you be more specific? Bananas are quite good, aren’t they?

42. Did you know bananas are supposed to be opened the other way around? Yes. Have you actually tried it, though? I don’t believe it. It’s hard, whichever way you try to open a banana.

43. What do you do to unwind after a long day? Sometimes I’ll have a little bash on the piano or guitar just to get out of my head for a bit.

44. Do you have a favourite trashy TV show? Gogglebox. It’s just a good show, though, I feel like it’s relatively guilt-free.

45. What would you be doing if you weren’t an actor, writer and director? Having a hard time, probably.

46. If you could pick up a new skill instantly, what would it be? Gymnastics. It would be amazing to just bounce around and do flips and stuff.

47. What’s the most nervous you’ve been on set? I remember being quite nervous in a scene in Giri/Haji where [my character has] been smoking crack and he’s reaching rock bottom. He’s waking up the next day and he sees his ex-boyfriend’s ghost. It called for an extreme kind of vulnerability and that’s quite a frightening thing.

48. Who’s an artist that shaped your perspective growing up? Samuel Beckett.

49. What’s a trend you’d like to see come back? I’ve just been shooting Amadeus in Budapest, and the frilly shirts were good. I feel like they could come back.

50. Maybe you could make it happen? I don’t think so. But I’d be an early adopter.

A Real Pain is out in UK cinemas now.

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