LONDON — If there was any sense of outside pressure associated with portraying Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart onscreen, Will Sharpe didn’t feel it. The actor, 39, accepted the role of the iconic composer in “Amadeus” because he was interested in excavating the man underneath the imposing historical legacy.
“There’s this apocryphal interpretation of Mozart that suggests the music just fell into his lap,” Sharpe says, speaking on a recent Friday evening outside London’s Barbican. The actor is in the middle of editing his forthcoming Apple TV series “Prodigies,” which he wrote, directed and stars in alongside Ayo Edebiri, and this was the only time he had available. But it seems fitting that the ever-busy Sharpe would take a break from his own creative process simply to discuss that of Mozart.
“I thought it was interesting to imagine: What is that in reality? What would that feel like day to day? What was his domestic situation?” he continues. “Who was he as a human being?”
“Amadeus,” written by “Black Doves” scribe Joe Barton, dramatizes the tense relationship between Mozart and Antonio Salieri (Paul Bettany). The limited series, currently airing in the U.S. on Starz, is a new adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 stage play of the same name, which in turn was inspired by Alexander Pushkin’s 1830 “Mozart and Salieri.” Shaffer’s play was previously adapted into Miloš Forman’s 1984 Oscar-winning film “Amadeus,” which starred Tom Hulce as Mozart and F. Murray Abraham as Salieri. Here, Barton expands the story over five episodes, portraying more details of Mozart’s life, including the perspective of his wife Constanze (Gabrielle Creevy).
“It’s not about the real Mozart — it’s a fictional version of him,” Sharpe says. “So I found that I was trying to capture some essence of who he maybe was. The main thing was to track him from when he arrives full of naivety and innocence and optimism and somehow try to curl into the darker person he is at the end.”
Sharpe previously collaborated with Barton on the 2019 British crime drama “Giri/Haji.” He didn’t previously know Bettany, who was thrilled by the idea of working alongside Sharpe. Both actors understood the task: to interrogate what drove each man to create music and why one’s compositions outlasted the other. The series begins with their early encounters in Vienna, where Salieri is the court composer and Mozart immediately impresses the emperor (Rory Kinnear) with his undeniable talent.
“Salieri’s predicament is awful,” Bettany says, speaking separately over Zoom from New York City. “He can’t understand why all of this love and attention is being lavished on this reprobate. There’s something heartbreaking about Salieri, about his self-awareness of being close to greatness, but not great. I thought of him as the antagonist as I was organizing how to play him as I worked on scripts, but not in the playing of him in the scenes.”
He adds, grinning, “Will was perfect casting. Playing greatness is very difficult. How do you play a genius? I think you probably need to get a genius to play one, and so he fits the role very well.”
Sharpe was cast six months ahead of shooting the series in Budapest in the summer of 2024, giving him plenty of time to prepare. He took piano lessons, learned to conduct an orchestra and listened to Mozart’s music.
“I found that quite helpful because even on the page there’s such a broad spectrum of aspects to his personality,” Sharpe says. “Some of him is so silly, almost juvenile, and then there are these dark, grand parts. His music, too, goes from being light-hearted and frivolous and free to feeling huge and overwhelming. It was about trying to marry all of those different parts of him into one human being.”
Sharpe has been in bands previously and could “noodle” something out on the guitar. But classic piano playing was far more intense. He played as much as possible himself during filming, occasionally having to learn a new song if the track was switched up at the last minute. He had the added challenge of playing on a fortepiano on set.
“They’re smaller keys and the action is really light and delicate, so suddenly, I was like, ‘Whoa, this is hard enough as it is,’” he says. “But actually I enjoyed that part of it. That and listening to music were both helpful in that they were almost like meditating on it without getting too in my head.”
He adds, “Mozart’s music was such an unusual but valuable resource to have. It was an actual part of him, but it’s not like reading facts. It’s a very pure expression of who he was.”
The conducting in “Amadeus” is not historically accurate to the 18th century because the big performance scenes were so emotionally essential to the narrative. Instead of being completely mechanical, as it would have been practiced at the time, Sharpe and Bettany learned a more modern style.
“The conducting was very metronomic, whereas modern conducting is so much about expression and signing to the orchestra how you want it to feel,” Bettany says. “There was none of that back then, but that would be super boring to watch. We got to a halfway point where there was some expressiveness.”
The scenes where Mozart is leading an orchestra were an opportunity for Sharpe to explore Mozart’s deeper feelings. “He doesn’t know how to read a room,” Sharpe says. “He doesn’t understand social norms. So a lot of what he’s trying to express is through his music. I was always looking for: What is the scene actually about? It couldn’t just be: ‘And now he’s doing his opera.’”
One of the series’ most pivotal scenes comes after the death of Mozart’s son. Both he and Constanze are grieving, and Mozart writes a piece called “Kyrie,” which Constanze performs as an opera — a cathartic moment for both. To film it, the production took over Budapest’s famous St. Stephen’s Basilica. The actor was conducting actual musicians, who performed along to playback. Bettany purposefully didn’t listen to “Kyrie” while the cameras were rolling.
“This is the first time that Salieri really understands what’s happening,” Bettany says. “Mozart has written a piece of music so beautiful that his wife can talk to their child in heaven one last time. And Salieri is having a very different experience, where he realizes God is speaking to this young man. He knows it’s going to destroy him.”
“Paul and I saw the characters as two brothers who have a common father in God, and they both feel that they’re being mistreated in some way,” Sharpe adds. “Salieri thinks that Mozart is getting all the attention and all the gifts. And he’s so pious and yet God neglects him. They have this idea that Mozart is a vessel for God’s music. But at what expense?”
The actors took different approaches to their performances. As Mozart, Sharpe veers dramatically through moments of unadulterated revelry and angst-ridden inner turmoil. Salieri is malicious and conniving, which Bettany disconcertingly says was very easy to embody. Their dual strategies resulted in a more explosive and interesting dynamic.
“Will plays things a lot more fast and loose in the moment than I do, and I think that’s probably necessarily with the types of characters we’re playing,” Bettany says. “Salieri has lots of plans, so Paul Bettany had lots of plans. Will had an overarching plan and always a very clear understanding of where he was in the story, but he was able to be in the scenes in a very playful way.”
“In some ways, it took way more preparation than any other part I’ve played,” Sharpe says. “But there was definitely something other about him. He has his own perspective and it doesn’t necessarily fit with how the world expects you to operate.”
“Amadeus” arrived at a particularly busy time for Sharpe. He earned an Emmy nomination for supporting actor in a drama series for the second season of “The White Lotus” after writing and directing the historical biopic “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” and directing the British miniseries “Landscapers.” He shot Jesse Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain” in Poland in 2023 and, ahead of “Amadeus” in early 2024, he starred in Lena Dunham’s comedy series “Too Much,” in which he played an indie musician.
“It certainly wasn’t conscious, like ‘This year I’m going to play musicians,’” Sharpe says. “But making ‘Too Much’ was a really enjoyable, happy process. I loved working with Lena. It was inspiring and reassuring to work with her. Same with Jesse, when he was directing and starring in ‘A Real Pain.’ Both of them are so curious and collaborative, and it helped me to understand I could do that again.”
“Prodigies” came out of an idea Sharpe had a decade ago. He imagined a long-term couple, two former child prodigies who had grown up and were now living unremarkable lives.
“I started to think about how I’d love to see a story about relationships and how them getting together is not the end,” he says. “It’s not even the first bit of their story. That brought up a lot of questions about who we’re meant to be and the idea of potential. Are you supposed to try and realize your potential? It suddenly came together and I found myself being able to write it really quickly.”
Sharpe hasn’t starred in something he also wrote and directed since “Flowers,” a two-season series that also featured Olivia Colman and Sharpe’s wife Sophia Di Martino. “Prodigies” was shot in London last year and Sharpe hopes it will premiere later this year.
“I’m still so in it that I have no perspective on it,” he says. “I haven’t had any time to reflect. But I feel like any work you’re allowed to do is amazing. I’m very grateful for that. And I always remind myself of how fortunate that is, even when it’s stressful or you’ve had no sleep or something happens that forces you to change your plans last minute. Even to have the opportunity to be solving those problems is such a blessing.”
Beyond “Prodigies,” there are other possibilities for Sharpe on the horizon, including an animated film he’s currently developing. But he also knows he needs to take a break. He and Di Martino have two children, who are 4 and 6, and balancing his home life with his career is a good way to stay grounded.
“To know what you want to do next you have to have the intention, but you also have to fill yourself up,” he says. “You have to go and live your life. And sometimes being away from the world of fiction is really healthy.”
Everything Sharpe does comes from a place of wanting to challenge himself. He’s always seeking unfamiliar territory, whether it’s as an actor, writer or director, because that’s where the big reward is.
“I want to feel like when I leave a project I couldn’t have given it any more,” he says. “I want to know I made some sort of sacrifice. There’s a version of that that is very unsustainable and unhealthy. And as you get older and get more experience, you learn to control or command that a bit more. But if you don’t give it your all, you might wonder if you could have been better. And with something like ‘Amadeus’ and the way his story plays out, it felt like it was right to approach it in that way.”
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