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

This is Fresh Air. I'm Anne-Marie Baldonato, sitting in for Terry Gross, who's homesick today. 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 Jeary Haji. More recently, he's appeared in Lena Dunham's 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 and the court composer Antonio Salieri, who's played by Paul Bettany. Salieri becomes increasingly consumed by envy after realizing Mozart possesses the musical brilliance Salieri desperately prays for but can never attain. Here's a scene from the beginning of the series

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