Onscreen, Will Sharpe has become especially adept at playing men who seem to exist in several emotional registers at once: charming yet withholding, cerebral yet faintly chaotic. That slippery quality gave his Emmy-nominated performance in the second season of The White Lotus its peculiar magnetism—and what now makes him such an unexpectedly fitting choice to inhabit Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Starz’s lavish new adaptation of Amadeus.
The five-part series, which premiered last week, reimagines Peter Shaffer’s classic play—itself inspired by Alexander Pushkin’s 1830 short drama and later adapted into an Oscar-winning 1984 film—as something moodier, sexier, and more psychologically volatile: a powdered-wig fever dream driven as much by resentment and ambition as by music. Opposite Paul Bettany’s tightly wound Antonio Salieri, Sharpe’s Mozart is less marble-bust icon than an impulsive prodigy buckling under the weight of his own talent. The series follows the composer’s arrival in late-18th-century Vienna and Salieri’s decade-long fixation on him, as admiration curdles into obsession. Tormented by what he sees as the divine ease of Mozart’s genius, Salieri begins to view him as a threat not only to his reputation but to his faith and sense of order.
Speaking to Vogue in New York last week, Sharpe was quick to complicate the mythology surrounding Mozart, focusing instead on the psychological cost of genius. “There were certain things in day-to-day life that other people find very simple that he finds quite complicated,” Sharpe said of his portrayal, describing Mozart as someone “run ragged” by the expectations attached to his gift.
That same tension informs the production’s visual language, with towering wigs inspired in part by rock-star silhouettes, court costumes worn with deliberate looseness, and richly embroidered velvet jackets—and one in punkish black leather—offset by an almost contemporary physicality. The result is an Amadeus that trades prestige-period stiffness for something far more sensual, chaotic, and alive. “The ambition for the show,” Sharpe said, “was not to be too prim or uptight.”
Below, the British actor, who’s also an accomplished screenwriter and director, discusses inhabiting one of history’s most mythologized figures—and finding the deeply human chaos beneath the legend.
Vogue: What drew you to this project?
Will Sharpe: Having worked with Joe [Barton, writer of Amadeus] on [the 2019 BBC-Netflix miniseries] Giri/Haji, I was curious to see what he had done with it. And because the story is set across five hours, there’s more space to see it from different perspectives than in the play or the film. Mozart is painted as someone for whom music just falls into his lap, and I was curious to understand how others saw him. What does it actually look like to be that person in their day-to-day life? He could write this extraordinary music but didn’t really seem to understand social norms and communicated in quite an unusual way—which in the show often ends up offending people, and he can’t understand why.
Did any aspect of Mozart feel unexpectedly contemporary to you?
There’s a kind of punkness to him. In those days, composers would have been seen as servants of the court, and by all accounts, he didn’t like being seen that way, so he tried to have more agency over his position and his music. The Marriage of Figaro was based on a banned text, so he wasn’t afraid to challenge authority. Also musically, you’d start to notice pop chord progressions in his music. You could really feel his influence on every genre of the present day.
You are probably the first actor of Asian descent to play Mozart, certainly for English-speaking audiences. What did you first think when envisioning yourself as him, and what are your thoughts about diverse casting and period projects generally?
The story is so famously fictionalized—we’re playing versions of these characters that aren’t biographically accurate. Even if it were, there would be a case to be made. I always think, with things like that, it’s to be taken on a case-by-case basis. More than anything, as I would with any role, I was just trying to see what’s on the page, trying to find my way into him and make him feel as human as possible. But the one thing that was quite unusual was that I did have this great resource of his music, and I found that really helpful, particularly because there was such a diversity in the music that, like in the scripts, reflected how he seemed as a person. Sometimes he’s so silly and frivolous and playful, and then at other times and increasingly over the series, he has this kind of grander, darker, operatic side to him. Trying to marry that all into one human being, the music was really helpful because it all comes from the real person. It’s not a tool you normally have, so I found it a really helpful way of meditating on the character.
Did immersing yourself in Mozart’s work alter the way you listen to music?
I felt a deeper appreciation for how classical music is constructed and how the different instruments speak to one another. I was really blown away by how mathematically, almost, and cleverly Mozart’s music is constructed. I reckon he would have enjoyed all kinds of music in the modern day. I could see him listening to prog rock or hip-hop and jazz and finding something to like in all of it. There was such a variety to his output, and he seemed so curious and open to ideas. He didn’t seem interested in anything traditional or the correct ways of doing things. He might come to it on its own terms and try to judge it purely as music. He’s quite an empirical musical being, in some ways.
When was the last time a work really impressed you?
I find it pretty incredible when I see musicians play orchestral music. We’re in the middle of recording some score for a show that I’m directing, and I’m always so blown away by how quickly musicians can pick it up. There’s something about a group of humans collaboratively expressing something. I found myself thinking about AI and AI-generated music. Is it ever a match for 20 people playing music all in unison?
Did the costumes affect the way you carried yourself? Was there any piece you would wear in real life?
When I think of Mozart, I think of his red jackets. All the costumes were so beautifully made, and more than any other part of it, they were pretty historically accurate. They do make you hold yourself in more of a courtly way, but Julian [Farino], the director, really wanted it to feel messy and lived in, so I tried not to hold myself in an uptight and what we think of as a period-drama way, particularly in the conducting scenes. Even though it was quite thick velvet, I tried to stay as loose as I could, fighting the material almost. One part of the costumes that I feel like probably could still work is the shirts. The big sleeves and frilly cuffs I could imagine working with a modern wardrobe.
What do you hope audiences understand more about Mozart after seeing the series?
It’s such a mythologized, skewed version of history, so if anyone is coming to Amadeus to learn facts, they’re in the wrong place. But there must have been something in the dynamic between Mozart and Salieri for it to even have spawned this mythology. I read one theory that actually Mozart, as he was becoming less sound of mind towards the end of his life, was the one who became paranoid that Salieri was out to get him. And then Salieri’s own confession towards the end of his life and Pushkin’s fascination with it…. There must have been something complex and interesting about how they related to each other for it to have spawned any of this.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
