Will Sharpe: ‘You’re not watching a film if you’re watching it at home’

Time Out’s London Film Festival cover star is happily running through his favourite hometown movies, and Mike Leigh features prominently. Naked and Happy-Go-Lucky sit at the top of writer-director-actor Will Sharpe’s picks on a tasty list that also boasts Mary Poppins, A Clockwork Orange and Notting Hill.

Those two Leigh classics – one funny in a dark, spiky way, the other in an unquenchably hopeful one – might even offer a gateway to Sharpe’s own work. Flowers, his beloved Channel 4 comedy-drama, put a blackly funny prism on mental health and relationships, while HBO’s Landscapers reunited him with Olivia Colman for a true crime drama that was all sharp edges. That playful streak was there, too, in 2021’s The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, a delightfully offbeat period biopic with Benedict Cumberbatch as a 19th century cat painter.

His LFF film, A Real Pain, showcases Sharpe the actor. Directed by Jesse Eisenberg, it sees him playing a well-meaning English tour guide, James, who shepherds Succession’s Kieran Culkin and Eisenberg around Poland’s historical sites as estranged American cousins reconnecting with their Jewish grandma’s pre-Holocaust homeland.

The film is Time Out’s LFF gala – so we would say this – but it’s a gem: bittersweet, funny in a waspish way, and full of truths, big and small, about family, heritage and the power of a good rooftop spliff to really take the edge off. It’s already garnering Oscar buzz. ‘It’s surprisingly rare to read scripts that feel that complete,’ says Sharpe. ‘It was a very funny, tender story.’ 

Sharpe has a supporting role but it’s another feather in his cap, to follow a breakthrough turn as The White Lotus season 2’s diffident tech wizz Ethan. 2019’s Giri/Haji, a Netflix thriller set in London and Tokyo, Sharpe’s two hometowns, and was eerily tailor-made for an adopted Londoner who moved from Japan to Surrey as an eight-year-old. His portrayal of drug-addict sex worker Rodney Yamaguchi won him a BAFTA. 

He and his partner, fellow actor Sophia Di Martino (Loki) live in north-west London, but he’s just back from a summer in Budapest filming a new TV version of playwright Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, suffering 40-degree heat in full 18th century garb. It’s quite minor key in places, he explains, running a hand through his mop of semi-ruly hair (‘It’s a version of my Mozart hair,’ he says). Amadeus, the man, doesn’t have an easy ride in it, he notes. 

An actor in demand, the 37-year-old is here to chat about another trip to eastern Europe – his work on the Poland-set A Real Pain – and cast an eye back over a 15-year career that seems poised to go stratospheric. 

What connected you to A Real Pain?
It was beautifully written and Jesse (Eisenberg) was very inspiring about it when I met him. I could completely see Kieran (Culkin) and him in those roles – the chemistry between them is crackly and infectious. It was quite fun to try to imagine how my character James ended up [guiding Jewish-Americans around Poland]. I was thinking about Brian Cox’s enthusiasm when he’s talking about the universe; someone with an infectious eagerness and sincerity.

Did Jesse Eisenberg give you films to watch beforehand as prep?
There wasn't any homework per se. There was one day where Jesse wanted to get an extra shot and he said: ‘Maybe you could talk about the architecture?’ I said: ‘I can't improvise about Polish history!’ From then on, any time we went anywhere, I’d research it in advance. Kieran would ask me why I knew so much about Polish history (laughs). 

So they’d be like: ‘Where’s Will? Oh, he’s over there on Wikipedia.’
A few times Jesse did say: ‘Oh, let’s get a couple of extra shots,’ and I had something in my pocket ready to go.

It must have been like life imitating art, with the cast all travelling around together on the shoot. Was there a special bond?
You do have to be quite vulnerable with each other on shoots – and people are usually quick to open up with each other. The most powerful experience was going to Majdanek, the concentration camp we visit in the film. That was very sobering.  

That day must stand apart from all your other acting experiences.
It was the day that I found the most challenging, because my character had been to this place many times before, whereas I hadn’t. So I had to try to control my own quite visceral reaction to it.  

You did classics at uni. If you took a tour party to, say, Ephesus or Rome, would you be as enthusiastic as your character?
I’m quite different from James, and I've probably forgotten everything for a start. I like walking around cities. As soon as I arrive somewhere, I like to walk in a spiral out from where I'm staying, just to get a sense of it. I'm not somebody who’s like: ‘I need to have gone to that museum or see a concert in that place…’ 

Is that how you've come to know London?
Yeah, probably. One thing I really enjoy is when different areas start to join: you’ve got to know one area and then one day, you’re in a different area and you sort of glide back into it and you’re like, ‘Oohhh! That’s how these two places join up.’ It’s like a magic trick.

As a tour guide, where are you taking London newcomers?
They’d need to see the South Bank, probably in the evening. Brick Lane is quite good. Portobello Market, Broadway Market. 

There isn’t any place that I’d 100 percent call home

Do you have a favourite London restaurant?
When we lived in Leytonstone there was a Thai restaurant called Singburi, which was excellent. It was a local secret one day, then you couldn't get a table the next.

Do you feel like a Londoner now?
Err... it’s a good question. I lived in Japan until I was eight and then moved to Surrey with my family, there isn't any place that I’d 100 percent call home. But I feel like I know London. Having spent a few months in Budapest this year and returning to London definitely felt like: Oh yeah! There's a greyness and a greenness I always notice as I arrive in London. It always smells like it’s just rained, even if it hasn’t. That’s an essence of something feeling like home.

How has being half-English and half-Japanese impacted your perspective?
I never feel quite at the centre of anything. I always feel like there's a slightly peripheral perspective. When I’m in England I still feel like a Japanese version of an English person, and when I’m in Japan I definitely feel like a western version of a Japanese person. 

Was it like that for you at Cambridge Uni, being part of that posh English society? 
Definitely a feeling of outsiderness, which comes with a bit of suspicion sometimes also. But you always find your people, which is one of the best things about being a human.

Was the Royal Shakespeare Company your first paid acting job after uni?
I think so, apart from a Ben Wheatley sketch show called The Wrong Door, where I had small parts in two or three sketches. Its USP was that it was a CGI sketch show, so there was a lot of high-concept stuff. Like, one of them was set on a spaceship. It came and went, but it was fun to work with Ben.

Next was ‘Casualty’, which is a real rite of passage for actors. What did being on that show give you?
I didn’t go to film school or drama school, so it taught me the basics of filming, the feeling of being on set and the rhythm of a shoot day. It's about how you expend your energy. At the beginning, if you’ve got a really important scene later in the day, you might come in completely wired and ready to go, but then something might go wrong with lighting, it's five hours later and you're exhausted. 

Finding your people is one of the best things about being a human

When you’re directing them, can you see actors like Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch doing that?
Everybody has their own process, and as a director that’s one of the really exciting things about meeting different actors, seeing how they work and how they find their way into the story. Cobbling together a micro-budget feature film gave me a good sense of what everyone does on a production. We were the catering, the transport, the casting directors. 

How were your catering skills?
Up and down. We’d double up, so if there was eating in a scene, we'd make it the on-set meal. 

You’re a filmmaker as well as an actor, of course. You made your first film, ‘Black Pond’, for £25,000 in 2011. What's the secret to making a movie on that budget?
Write as few characters and locations as possible. A tip Ben Wheatley gave us was just have them in the same costumes all the way through. My co-director Tom (Kingsley) and I made a short film in Japan – it was in my grandma’s house and she was in it – and then [someone] at Tom’s production company offered us £50,000 to make it into a feature. We got really excited and I started writing the script, but then their boss came back from sabbatical and said: ‘Why would I do that?’ But by that point, we believed that it was possible and went on raising the money as best we could.

You’re attached to an adaptation of Michelle Zauner’s ‘Crying in the H Mart’. Is that your next directorial project?
The strikes made scheduling that quite difficult, so I'm not sure where we're at with that. Has it been cast? No.

What was it like to be part of a cultural moment with The White Lotus?
I was definitely aware of it, but I didn’t have any sense of objectivity or of what the punters’ experience was of the show. It was exciting to feel like it was landing. I always had faith in the material and in [showrunner] Mike White, but nevertheless it was still weirdly surprising. It’s the thing I’ve been a part of that was the most seen. It was definitely a bit abstract for me. But you do have a sense of it.

Did the Tube interactions go up?
Yeah, definitely. But not in an uncomfortable way. 

You're not on social media, so you weren’t exposed to the memes directly?
People would send me stuff so it's not like I didn't see anything, but you can still feel it in the way people want to talk to you about it or how it comes up at the beginning of meetings about something else. 

Are you looking forward to the next season?
Yeah, I’m really curious to see what Mike’s key interest is this time around. 

Is there a WhatsApp group for The White Lotus?
There was. But it’s no longer operational.

You won a BAFTA for Giri/Haji, and one critic compared your performance with Richard E Grant in Withnail and I. That must have been gratifying as a Withnail fan?
Oh wow. I don’t remember that. 

I read that you particularly related to the character, which is maybe surprising considering his lifestyle.
He has a self-destructive streak and uses humour as a defence mechanism. Those two things, and that he’s biracial, half Japanese, felt like a way into him.

How does your self-destructive streak manifest?
(Hesitant) I feel like I'm getting better at managing all those things.

What was the reaction to The White Lotus like? A bit abstract

You tackled mental health in Flowers and you’ve talked about your experience with type two bipolar disorder in the past. What’s been your approach to good mental health?
Enjoying being in a state of peace, where maybe for a time the default was to chase one feeling or another. It only really felt like I was alive in those moments and then I’d pay the price for it, chemically. Somebody described it as like compression on a music track, where you’re trying to cut out the highest and lowest frequencies. Some of it is very boring – just regularity, sleeping and eating properly and taking care of yourself makes a big difference. And learning to catch yourself if you're entertaining a certain pattern of thinking.

Was all that in your mind writing the show?
I didn't really know what I was about to write when I started writing it, but it was very cathartic for me. I wrestled with how unfair it was that I could simply make these characters happier by writing it down, whereas in reality it’s not always that easy. Reconciling a feeling of hopefulness with the reality of mental illness and how it can be for many, many people – including myself – was a balance I fought very hard to strike. 

You've worked with Olivia Colman three times now. Is she officially your muse?
I definitely think she’s amazing; a brilliant actor and mesmerising to watch. I remember saying to her after a day of filming on Landscapers, 'It’s amazing what you just did today'. I haven't seen her for a while but we keep in touch.

In Lena Dunham’s new London-set show, Too Much, you’re playing Felix, the love interest of Meg Stalter’s American expat. What kind of Londoner is Felix?
He’s a grunge musician, a bit of a tearaway. He’s sort of squatting with his mate who made a huge amount of money, retired and became a climate activist, and is sort of a man child. He's that kind of Londoner. It was a lot of fun to make that show – Lena is extraordinary and has such a smart, quick story brain and is interested in character and people.

She gets London?
I think so. The show has an outsider's perspective and it references those classic Working Title romcoms and Jane Austen films like Sense and Sensibility. Meg’s character carries those romantic dreams of what England will be like. She’s going to live on an estate and she thinks that it'll be a courtly estate but it's actually a council estate.

Do you have a favourite London cinema?
I do love the Picturehouses and the Everymans, and what's that extraordinary cinema in Notting Hill? The Electric. Full-on sofas. I saw Nope there. I got to the cinema to see Barbie and Oppenheimer too, but to my shame, it’s quite rare these days.

You’re not watching a film if you’re watching it at home

Do you worry for cinemas?
I do, slightly. There’s an argument that streaming allows more people to get to films, but the communality of the cinema is a different experience. How much care and attention goes into the grading of the picture, and the mix of the music and the balancing of the sound. You’re not watching a film if you’re watching it at home, unless you have a home cinema and who has that?

Bringing A Real Pain to the LFF must be a good moment, then?
I’m very proud, it's a beautiful film. It feels like Jesse made what he'd intended to make, which is not always the case. I’m proud to be around it.

A Real Pain plays at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday Oct 13, Tuesday October 15 and Sunday October 20. In UK cinemas Jan 10, 2025.