Here’s the thing. Will Sharpe has taste. He’s starred in Joe Barton‘s critically acclaimed series “Girl/Haji.” He wrote and directed the critically acclaimed HBO limited series “Landscapers,” and he earned an Emmy nomination for his role in the smash second season of Mike White’s “The White Lotus.” And, now, he’s a key figure in Jesse Eisenberg’s Sundance breakout, “A Real Pain” which just delivered the third-best per-screen average of 2024.
A moving and often hilarious story of two cousins’ journey to Poland, “A Real Pain” finds Sharpe portraying James, the British tour guide who seems to know a bit too much about the Jewish experience. In our interview last month, Sharpe explained how important the right British accent and, yes, the right jacket was for his character. He also revealed how James being a philosemite, was a key insight into his relationship with his tour clients including those aforementioned cousins, Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David (Eisenberg).
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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What was your first thought when Jesse sent you the script?
Well, I was a fan of Jesse’s work already, so I was excited as soon as I received the email, curious to see what the script was what it was about. As I read the script, I felt like it was one of the most fully formed, beautiful scripts I’d ever read. It was so precise in its tone, it was so clear in its messaging, I suppose, and I really felt like I understood what Jesse was trying to say and the questions he was trying to ask. And so yeah, I was excited to speak with him. And, when I met with Jesse, I found him to be very funny and inspiring company and was excited to be a part of the movie.
What did he tell you specifically when you met with him about your character, James?
Well, he introduced me to the word philosemite, which I wasn’t familiar with, but my understanding of it is that it means somebody who is not themselves Jewish but over-identifies with Jewish culture. And he explained that sometimes it can be used in a kind of pejorative way, but not always. And sometimes, it can create a sort of social awkwardness or even a kind of comic awkwardness, but that he wanted James to be a character who has zero bad intentions. He genuinely is, for whatever personal reasons, passionately invested in this history, and he just wants the group to feel informed and to shepherd them on this trip. So, that was, I think the headline that I carried into the character was just that he, he’s very earnest, innocent being.
Did Jesse say whether he had based James on anyone he had met? Or was it based on someone he encountered during his trips to Poland?
Yeah, well, so I think Jesse and his wife have been on several tours, so I guess it’s in some ways an amalgam of personalities that he’s encountered along the way. But he also said that he was trying to think of who would be funny for Benji to come up against. And so I think he was thinking of this sort of painfully polite, earnest character and how if he sort of put so much effort and care and attention into curating this tour and being as sensitive to everyone’s needs as possible. And then Benji sort of confronts him about it and says, “There’s too many facts in this. Nothing’s real about this tour.” That would be a sort of funny and painful thing to watch. So, I think it was partly that.
I think you’re also referring to that one scene, which is one of the best scenes in the film where they’re at the cemetery and Benji confronts James. Did you guys have any time to rehearse or even a read-through?
There was not a lot of time. We did do a read-through the day before we started shooting, and probably the biggest shift in James that happened was at the read-through. I read it in a kind of what we call in the UK RP, like a “received pronunciation” accent, which is kind of like a neutral posh London accent. And something about it was not chiming. I could feel in my gut that it wasn’t the James that Jesse had described to me or that I felt like he was supposed to be from the page. It felt sort of oddly cold and condescending, I think, because he is so much of what he’s doing is kind of educating the group. And so, I sort of went away and was thinking about it. I’d phoned Jesse that day and was like, I wonder actually what would happen if we tried James with a sort of more regional accent just to give him some specificity, and maybe it would feel warmer and that he’s a kind of less cardboard cutout Oxford grad. And he has kind of found himself with this education and obsessed with this part of history. And something about, I think, somebody who looks like me, who’s mixed race, having a kind of Sheffield accent immediately makes you wonder about their story and where they come from and how they came to be the person that they are. And Jesse was really excited about it, and he was like, “That’s perfect. That’s definitely how we should do it.” And so that gave me confidence in the character. And from then on, I felt like I knew exactly who this guy was, and I really sort of appreciated the attention to detail and the costuming where I remember we tried everything from a really smart navy blue blazer to more sporty kind of combat jackets and North Face and stuff. And in the end, the jacket that we chose was the jacket that the costume designer said, “This is the sad jacket.” And we put it on, and I was like, “Oh, this feels perfect.” It’s just kind of neutral, and all his attention is on the work and on the tour. Yeah.
I feel like James is a character where you’re sort of like, “I do hope he goes out and has fun.” He does seem very super focused at this point of his life on something where he should be enjoying his life as well.
It was fun to try and imagine what his day-to-day is. Occasionally, we would even talk about it between takes, and there’s one version of him where, I don’t know, he boils one egg every morning and has exactly the same amount of milk in his tea. He has a regularity to his life. And there’s another one where he puts on such a clean front for his work that, actually he’s going to crazy raves on a Saturday to decompress.
I sort of believe he might be the second version.
Maybe.
I could be wrong. I did want to ask, though, when you’re doing these scenes with Kieran and the whole ensemble, how do you know that it’s right? How do you know, “Wait, we nailed this.” You’re in the middle of a forest. It could not have been a long shooting day. It’s an independent film, so there’s not a lot of time. Or are you just trusting Jesse on the other side of that camera?
Just trusting Jesse and his sort of ability to calibrate is so kind of fine. And I could feel it in the script. The script was so tight and so precise, and I could feel it in his shot listing his shot choices. He sort of has this weird mixture of feeling like he was completely in command of what he wanted and what he was trying to do with each scene, but he also made it feel like we had the freedom to play and to kind of discover details within the scene. And you’ve mentioned this cemetery scene with Kieran, and with that particular scene, there was a little bit of time to kind of experiment. And so, we tried it at different temperatures. In some takes, I was a bit more defensive and kind of defended myself in a bit more in a kind of stronger way. And in others, I just sort of crumbled so much that I was in one take. I think I even went to hide behind a tree or something. And for me, that was an exciting scene because it’s the most direct interaction James has with Benji, and I really enjoyed acting opposite Kieran. He’s such a surprising, live, kind of, intuitive performer. And so, in a way, I felt like everyone in this film was just very kind of trusting of each other, and Jesse made us feel safe in the film and safe in his hands. And that allows you to feel like you can try stuff and that he will kind of take care of you.
Is there a benefit to having an actor as a director? Or do you feel like it’s sort of a cliche, that many people in the industry think that somehow because they’re another actor, they will relate to you more?
I mean, there’s certainly an argument to say that because he’s been in your shoes, he’s aware of what it feels like to be on the side of the camera. And I definitely found Jesse to be a very empathetic director. He seemed very tuned into everyone’s needs and feelings, and I was really impressed and had a great deal of respect for how he always seemed to land the performance side of his job at the same time as managing the cruise needs and handling the invisible stress of a shooting day for a director. But maybe he would be like that anyway, even if he didn’t have experience as an actor. I don’t know. But yeah, for me, I mean, I enjoyed working with him both as an actor and as a director.
There’s a sequence in the film where the characters visit a former concentration camp, the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp.
Yeah.
Can you talk about what is the sensitivity like to shoot something fictional there? And what that sort of day or days were like for you all?
It was one day and it was a day that we obviously were looking ahead to in the schedule. We knew it was coming. And for me, it was my first time in a concentration camp, and it was a very humbling and emotionally intense day, as you can imagine. I think I’m right in saying it’s the first time a fiction film has been shot there. Jesse had to work very hard to forge a relationship with the people who worked at the camp, and I think he possibly even needed to make a case with the Polish government. And ultimately, they could see that his intentions were heartfelt and noble. And I think they could also see how that location is used in the film. It’s almost like an extension of what the location is doing in real life. It’s open to visitors who want to come. And I really respected and admired how Jesse chose to shoot that sequence where we go to Majdanek. It was so sensitively handled. He would just put the camera in a place, barely any dialogue, and just allow us to pass through the location. And I think it invites the audience to kind of think about it without manipulating them into feeling anything in particular or imposing anything on them if you like. And the history and the location, I think, in that sequence is sort of speaking for itself. But yeah, the one thing that I remember about that day was, for me, it was my first time. And so I was aware I needed to manage my own quite visceral emotional response to being there because I knew that my character James would’ve been there multiple times, and he would’ve been that his role would’ve been to shepherd everybody else through the space.
And I remember Jesse gave me a firsthand testimonial of somebody who had really been in that camp, and it was quite a harrowing testimony to read. And he gave it to me maybe the night before we shot there or the morning of. So, I didn’t have that long to prepare it. And as I read the testimony in the space that the testimony was referring to, I remember I could feel my leg shaking from the adrenaline of just, I guess, trying to comprehend the unthinkable atrocities that were being described in this piece of writing and sort of at the same time try to present as somebody who had been there many times before.
I can only imagine the difficulty of trying to play a character while experiencing that. This is a horrible transition on my part, but before they steal you away, I am judging from your long hair that you just finished the new Amadeus limited series. Could you tease this version compared to other versions of Amadeus’ story we’ve seen before?
I mean, I’ve just come out of it so it’s fairly raw, I think. [He pauses.] Yeah. Let’s see.
“A Real Pain” is now playing in limited release.
