Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong reflect on Trump, power and 'The Apprentice'

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. The Academy Awards are Sunday. Today, we feature interviews with three nominees - first, actor Jeremy Strong. He's probably best known for his role in the HBO series "Succession," playing the troubled character of Kendall Roy. In the film "The Apprentice," Strong is nominated for his role as the unscrupulous lawyer Roy Cohn, who mentored a young Donald Trump as he was establishing himself in his father's real estate business. In the 1950s, Cohn was infamous for being the chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate investigation into suspected communists. Cohn and McCarthy also were leaders in the antigay movement that led to an executive order banning gay people from serving in government. But Cohn was a closeted gay man who died of AIDS. He never came out and insisted that his disease wasn't AIDS but was liver cancer. Strong's performance personifies what was written about Cohn on his patch on the AIDS Memorial Quilt - bully, coward, victim. Terry spoke with Jeremy Strong last October.

Let's begin with a scene from early in the film when Trump and Cohn first meet. Trump has just gotten accepted to a private dining club in Manhattan. Cohn is seated at a table with several mobsters, including Fat Tony Salerno, the boss of the Genovese crime family. When Cohn notices Trump, whom he's never seen before, he asks his friend to bring Trump to the table. Cohn is interested in finding out who Trump is. Trump is played by Sebastian Stan. Jeremy Strong, as Cohn, speaks first.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE APPRENTICE")

JEREMY STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) What is your business, Donald?

SEBASTIAN STAN: (As Donald Trump) Real estate. I'm vice president of The Trump Organization.

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) Oh, you're Fred Trump's kid?

STAN: (As Donald Trump) That's right.

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) He's Fred Trump's kid. It sounds like your father's a little tangled up. It looks like he could use a good lawyer.

(LAUGHTER)

STAN: (As Donald Trump) Well...

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) But tell us about it.

STAN: (As Donald Trump) Right now the government and the NAACP are suing us. They're saying our apartments are segregated.

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) This is America. You can rent to whoever the hell you damn want.

STAN: (As Donald Trump) But our lawyer wants us to pay a huge fine to settle.

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) Oh.

STAN: (As Donald Trump) And we can't. It's going to bankrupt us and ruin the company, so...

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) You tell the Feds to [expletive] themselves.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Damn straight.

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) File a lawsuit. Always file a lawsuit. Fight them in court. Make them prove you're discriminating.

STAN: (As Donald Trump) Wow. I guess I might have to get us a new lawyer.

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) Of course, it helps if Nixon and the attorney general are your pals.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: Jeremy Strong, welcome to FRESH AIR. I love the film, and that scene has so much energy to it. You have such swagger in it.

STRONG: Thank you, Terry. I'm honored to be talking to you. Thanks for having me.

GROSS: Oh, it is totally my pleasure. You know, a biopic is different from a film based on an original story. So you had a character who is a known person who you had to portray. What did you do to know, to watch, to listen to him before playing him?

STRONG: Yeah, you know, I'll just say I haven't watched the film in a while, and hearing that scene back - it's really so charged, isn't it? And Roy in that scene encapsulates the playbook which the film examines, the idea that, you know, what Roy Cohn stood for, these principles that he passed on to Donald Trump - always attack, deny everything and never admit defeat - they're all kind of - the DNA of that scene contains all of them. It's a great introduction of a character.

But your question about playing historical figures - you know, I've done a fair amount of work playing people who, you know, were either alive or were historical figures - John Nicolay in "Lincoln," James Reeb in "Selma," Jerry Rubin in "The Trial Of The Chicago 7," Lee Harvey Oswald. I feel always an enormous sense of responsibility to a kind of historical veracity and accuracy to try and capture and render the essence of these people. And ultimately, it's not an intellectual - you're not writing an essay on someone. So the information is sort of emotional, intuitive, visceral information.

GROSS: But did you ever fact-check any of it? Like, did you feel a responsibility to not only be - have acting truth but have, you know, like, fact truth?

STRONG: Absolutely. Yes, I absolutely feel a sort of fidelity to truth with a capital T, which is funny in this case because Roy Cohn - if he's anything, to me, he's, like, the progenitor of alternative facts. He's, like, not someone who really espoused truth with a capital T. He thought truth was a plaything, that you could do as you wish with it.

GROSS: And I should mention here that the film was written by Gabriel Sherman, who is a journalist who wrote a book about, you know, Murdoch and Fox News.

STRONG: Yeah, a book about Roger Ailes and...

GROSS: Yeah. I should have said Ailes, right?

STRONG: Well, no, I mean, it's also about Murdoch. But, of course...

GROSS: Yeah.

STRONG: ...I read that book when I was working on "Succession" because, you know, during that time...

GROSS: Right. Well, that's the thing. Like, I feel like your recent career is so connected to Trump because "Succession"...

STRONG: There's sectionality there, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah. What I want to know is, do you feel very adjacent to Trump - like, that you know Trump? Because your characters have been so, you know, related to Trump in one way or another and very directly related in "The Apprentice."

STRONG: You know, I don't.

(LAUGHTER)

STRONG: I don't. If I'm honest, I feel that my job is to almost be a sort of vessel, which involves kind of clearing myself out. I went on a silent meditation retreat last week, Terry. And the teacher, who's an incredible man named Jon Kabat-Zinn, who's written a lot of great books...

GROSS: Oh, yeah, yeah. I know who he is, yeah.

STRONG: Jon talked about a term called anatta, which means no-self or not-self. And it really resonated with me because I find that that is the place where I tend to be when I'm working, I think, creatively. But your question about whether I felt adjacent to Trump - I guess I don't. I guess I feel like my job is to be a musician, a first chair musician, to play whatever instrument it is that I'm given...

GROSS: Yes.

STRONG: ...To play whatever piece of music that I'm given.

GROSS: I'm going to stop you there because I was going to ask you if you notate your scripts as if they were music. Because, like in the scene that we just heard, there's real music in your voice. You've got a rhythm.

STRONG: Thank you. You know, I used to. When I was in college, I sort of have held on to old scripts and plays. And when I did, you know, "American Buffalo" or something, "Look Back In Anger" in college, I have a million notes, and it's sort of notated and annotated to death. And then at a certain point, I just stopped writing anything down. I guess at a certain point, you develop a trust in your unconscious, intuitive self that if it's properly absorbed something, then it will be there somehow.

Now, the - I think voice is very important to me for any character. And Roy had a very, very particular way of speaking and a very specific pentameter. And the music of that is something that becomes your job to both master and then throw away. You know, he writes in "Hamlet" - Shakespeare says that use can almost change the stamp of nature. And I feel that actors, especially when you're attempting to do some kind of transformational work, which is the kind of work that I love the most and have been inspired by in my life the most, your job is to kind of change the stamp of your nature. And voice is a really key part of that because there's something about a person's voice that is like their eyes. It's such a way in to that person.

GROSS: Well, why don't we listen to the real Roy Cohn's voice? This is from an interview with Tom Snyder...

STRONG: Yeah.

GROSS: ...On his late-night show, "Tomorrow," as...

STRONG: I probably watched this a thousand times.

GROSS: ...Really? - as broadcast in 1977. So here we go.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE TOMORROW SHOW")

TOM SNYDER: Now here is Roy Cohn, who appeared recently on the cover of Esquire magazine. And the title of that article, as I recall, sir, was "The Legal Executioner."

ROY COHN: Yeah.

SNYDER: And it went on to say that you are really a tough man and that at times, you can...

COHN: Tough, mean, vicious. So...

SNYDER: What does that kind of publicity do for your business in New York?

COHN: Oh, it's fantastic. The worse the adjectives, the better it is for business.

SNYDER: What are they looking for? What are they buying?

COHN: Scare value. Going back over a period of years, when I call somebody or write a letter or something like that, this is supposed to make them tremble and think unless they act promptly and reasonably, that all sorts of terrible consequences are going to flow.

GROSS: So what was it like playing somebody who you find, like - is despicable (laughter) too strong a word?

STRONG: I mean, I don't think it's too strong a word. But, you know, you have to really check that at the door as an actor when you approach a role.

GROSS: ...And just be him.

STRONG: You have to leave your judgment at the door and try to, in an almost diagnostic way, identify their wounds and their struggle and then fight their fight the way they did. I'm simply trying to inhabit him in a fully dimensional way, as you do for any character.

BIANCULLI: Jeremy Strong speaking with Terry Gross last October. He's nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role as Roy Cohn in the film "The Apprentice." We'll hear from his co-star in the film, Sebastian Stan, after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. Today, we're featuring our interviews with Oscar contenders. Sebastian Stan, whose credits include playing Tommy Lee in the TV series "Pam & Tommy," and Bucky Barnes in Marvel's "Captain America" and Avengers movies, is nominated for an Academy Award for his starring role as Donald Trump in the film "The Apprentice."

The movie begins in 1973, when Trump is 27, still working for his father's real estate development company and trying to make a name for himself. The company is being sued for discriminating against Black people in its rental units. Trump convinces his father to hire Roy Cohn as their attorney. Cohn becomes Trump's mentor, teaching him how to admit nothing and deny everything, go on the attack and intimidate through the threat of lawsuits. Terry Gross recently spoke with Sebastian Stan.

Let's start with a scene from "The Apprentice." Trump is planning to build Trump Tower and is trying to persuade the mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, that the building will be so extraordinary Koch should give him tax breaks. Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong, also is in the room. You'll hear him jump into the conversation.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE APPRENTICE")

STAN: (As Donald Trump) I really think this is going to be one of the most exceptional buildings anywhere in the world. And frankly, there's never been anything like it - 68 stories tall, 28 sides, a million square feet. Every unit will have amenities like you wouldn't believe, and the high floors have exceptional views over Central Park. The lobby, the floors will all be marble, pink paradiso marble from Italy. It'll have the largest atrium in the world, a 60-foot waterfall spanned by shops and retail and restaurants. And I think it's going to be something very special. Frankly, there's never been anything like it.

IAN D CLARK: (As Ed Koch) And what are you going to call it?

STAN: (As Donald Trump) Trump Tower.

CLARK: (As Ed Koch) Trump Tower - oh, that's interesting.

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) Look, he has a great track record, so we think this is a very reasonable ask.

CLARK: (As Ed Koch) Well, I - as I frequently say about his buildings, the merits are fine. The thing is, we're just not going to give you the tax breaks. Why would we? I mean, I can't let you get rich on the backs of the people of New York and their treasury. I can't...

STAN: (As Donald Trump) Well, Mr. Mayor, I mean, first of all...

CLARK: (As Ed Koch) ...Do that, Donald.

STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) Look, Mr. Mayor, my client...

STAN: (As Donald Trump) Well, you're not. You're not, Mr. Mayor, because I'm building a 68-story building that's going to employ 5,000 construction workers.

CLARK: (As Ed Koch) And we have heard stories about the construction workers working on your projects. They don't get paid. They have liens against you, Donald.

STAN: (As Donald Trump) I'm trying to employ people in New York and turn us back around...

CLARK: (As Ed Koch) You're trying to just get...

STAN: (As Donald Trump) ...Towards the future. And you're being a very unfair guy 'cause frankly, what do you know about me? What do you know about the amount of money that I made on my own? You don't know anything, to be perfectly honest, Mr. Mayor.

CLARK: (As Roy Cohn) Donald.

STAN: (As Donald Trump) You don't know me at all.

CLARK: (As Ed Koch) Oh.

STAN: (As Donald Trump) But you will. You'll never forget me after this 'cause I won't forget what you just did. Trump Tower will be built with or without you.

CLARK: (As Ed Koch) OK.

STAN: (As Donald Trump) You're about to be sued, Mr. Mayor.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Sebastian Stan, welcome to FRESH AIR. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. I think you're great.

STAN: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

GROSS: So after choosing that clip - first of all, I should say, some listeners were probably thinking, he doesn't sound like Trump. What would you say to that?

STAN: Well, I mean, I would say that Trump did not sound like Trump when he was in his mid-to-late 30s, which is when that was sort of happening. And I think that I did make some conscious choices very carefully with the voice not only just to honor the age and what he sounded like at the time - which, to me, sounded very different than today - but also to not lean into it as much as it's become popular to do, because a big challenge with this role was obviously to avoid falling into caricature and into sort of the version of a cartoon that he's somewhat become - one would argue even willingly on his own part (laughter), whether he's aware of that or not - because the voice, along with mannerisms and other physical characteristics that he has that we've become so accustomed to and we've been so oversaturated with, really had to be kind of very - I had to very carefully select and maneuver them and kind of earn them over the period of time of the movie, very much like he did as he grew into what we see today, but in part because I needed to bring audience in on this journey as opposed to alienating them from the beginning with what they already sort of know and expect.

GROSS: After choosing that clip, I read that you improvised some of that scene.

STAN: That whole clip actually was improvised. Yes (laughter). The scene in the script, as it was written - it started out with, you know, it just said, Donald finishes introducing Trump Tower, and he sits down, and he goes, well, what do you think, Mr. Mayor? And he goes, oh, very fascinating. What do you call it? So - but in the manner that we had been shooting, by the time we got to the scene, I was already prepared to sort of have something ready because our director was always encouraging.

And really, the script was asking for this. You know, it was always asking for the beginning and the end of the scenes, which weren't there. You know, we had a lot of the middle of the bulk of what we needed - right? - that was written, but there were many times where we needed to kind of, like, find out about what surrounded it. And, you know, that was part of what I did to prepare many times the night before with this scene and other scenes, where I would very kind of surgically construct an improvisation in his way of speaking that I would get from various interviews that I'd collected over time and things that he had said to Barbara Walters and Larry King and many things that he had said to Ed Koch and all kinds of footage that I had placed together.

GROSS: You made the film while Biden was president in between Trump's two terms. What's it like watching his second term after having played him?

STAN: Well, that's a really great question, and it's a - it's one where there's no real clear answer that I can give you. It's a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag. I mean, in a lot of ways, a lot of things look very predictable to me, especially having studied him for this film - the victimhood, blaming, the revenge tactics, all that we go in depth in the film that he had absorbed from Roy Cohn. You really do see - I think, even if you look at the inauguration, I mean - and even at the debate - right? - with Kamala Harris, I mean, you really see what we talk about in the movie, of these sort of ways he's learned to flip it around on the other person and kind of just always just be denying reality and reshaping the truth as long as it fits his narrative and the complete utter lack of acceptance for any criticism or any wrongdoing or anything whatsoever.

So it's eerily familiar. It's predictable. It's also, I may say, tragic because I guess, for me, you know, I also feel like I saw a version of this overweight kid that was paranoid and insecure and desperate for attention that was made to pay a big price at Daddy's big betrayal, sending him off to military school where he had to kind of - you know, whatever happened there that dehumanized him further and the revenge that he's been enacting out. You know, and at the same time, it's hard not to sort of find some of it upsetting as well because I do feel so much of it is rage and anger that's been suppressed and undealt with that we're all having to kind of just, you know, deal with and pay a price for.

GROSS: Playing him, I'm sure you had to be him and see things from his point of view, which requires you, the actor, to have empathy for Trump, the character that you're portraying.

STAN: Well, I think as an actor, you have to kind of go through a process where you look at, what are the things here that I feel that are useful for me to do this in the right way that it's asking of me? And what are the things that I feel that are going to work against me? And then you have to sort of become an investigator. And you have to, in a way, be a bodyguard to the character you're playing.

And I've wrestled with a degree of powerlessness as a child that I have felt growing up as a result of a lot of change that happened very quickly in formative years where I didn't feel safe and changing countries and changing schools and changing homes and caretakers coming and going and so on. And that's affected my life in a certain way, but I would argue nowhere near the degree of powerlessness that I feel he must've gone through in order to create such an ulterior ego to the extent that he has, because that's what I really see it's about with him. It's always power and mistrust and paranoia. And everything is transactional. That's how he operates.

BIANCULLI: Sebastian Stan, speaking to Terry Gross. He's nominated for an Academy Award for his starring role as Donald Trump in "The Apprentice." After a break, we'll hear from another of this year's best actor Oscar nominees, Adrien Brody, nominated for his starring role in "The Brutalist." And John Powers reviews "Flow," an animated film from Latvia that has earned Oscar nominations for both best animated feature and best international film. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MARTIN DIRKOV'S "THREE RULES")

: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. The Academy Awards are being televised on Sunday, and among the best actor nominees is Adrien Brody, up for his starring role in "The Brutalist." He plays a Hungarian refugee who escapes post-war Europe and arrives in the U.S. with dreams of rebuilding his life. The film is up for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture, directing, cinematography, supporting actor and actress and screenplay. Directed by Brady Corbet, "The Brutalist" explores the harsh realities of the American dream.

Brody portrays a fictional character named Laszlo Toth, who settles in Pennsylvania in 1947. He soon meets a wealthy industrialist, played by Guy Pearce - who's also nominated for an Academy Award - who recognizes Laszlo's talent and hires him to create a community center in honor of his mother. However, the relationship between the two comes at a cost. The sweeping nature of "The Brutalist" is reminiscent of Brody's work in "The Pianist," in which he won an Oscar for his stirring performance as a Jewish pianist from Warsaw who survived the Holocaust by hiding from the Nazis. Adrien Brody spoke with Tonya Mosley last month.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TONYA MOSLEY: I want to play a clip so folks can hear a little bit from the movie. But first, I want to just set up. Your character, Laszlo, arrives in the U.S. in '47. And he goes to stay with his cousin in Philly, who's been in the U.S. for a couple of years now. And he owns a furniture shop named Miller & Sons. And I'm saying that because that is not your cousin's name. He does not have sons. But he notes that Americans love a simple name, and they also love a family business.

ADRIEN BRODY: (Laughter) Yeah.

MOSLEY: So your character works for his cousin designing furniture for the store. And then one day, the son of a wealthy businessman asks you two to redesign his father's library as a surprise. And when the father, Harrison Lee Van Buren, who's played by Guy Pearce, returns home and sees this library, he's furious. He refuses to pay. This sends your character into a spiral until a little while later, Lee Van Buren searches and finds your character shoveling coal. He apologizes. He asks him to be a part of this new project to create a community center in honor of his deceased mother. And in this scene I'm about to play, Van Buren asks your character why he chose architecture as a profession when he lived in Hungary. Van Buren, played by Pearce, speaks first.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BRUTALIST")

GUY PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren) Answer me something. Why architecture?

BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) Is it a test?

PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren) No, it is not.

BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) Nothing is of its own explanation. Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction? There was a war on, and yet it is my understanding that many of the sites of my projects had survived. They remain there still in the city. When the terrible recollections of what happened in Europe cease to humiliate us, I expect for them to serve instead as a political stimulus, sparking the upheavals that so frequently occur in the cycles of peoplehood.

MOSLEY: That's my guest today, Adrien Brody, in the new film "The Brutalist." He's in that scene with Guy Pearce. And you're known - you're pretty well-known for going the extra mile to embody your characters. In particular, with "The Pianist," you did all sorts of stuff. You gave up your apartment, you put your stuff in storage, you moved to Europe, you learned to play the piano. I think all the headlines talked about how you starved yourself. I think you lost, like, 30 pounds. And you do this with all of - a lot of your films. For the movie "Dummy," you literally slept with a dummy to play a ventriloquist.

BRODY: Well, depends what you mean by that, but yes...

MOSLEY: (Laughter) Slept next to...

BRODY: Slept in the same bed together. But I worked with it very - I had to learn how to, yeah, be very close to it (laughter).

MOSLEY: Were there any things in particular for this role that you kind of refashioned your life for to really embody Laszlo?

BRODY: You know, I only do what I feel is necessary to find a closeness and a sense of truth so that I can, you know, quote, "act" less, you know, and feel honest in an interpretation. I can't portray a man who's starving if I don't understand hunger. I can't portray the physical shift of a man who's starved by not losing that weight. I can't understand classical music without knowing to play it. You name it.

And fortunately, a lot of that work that I had done in an effort to honor Szpilman in "The Pianist," and really to honor one man's journey that represented the loss of 6 million and spoke to such a horrific time in our history, gave me a great deal of insight and understanding in what Laszlo's past experiences were, that he is just on the precipice of overcoming as he arrives to the United States. And so while this movie is a vastly different story and a story about an immigrant's journey, it is also the journey of someone who's endured that. And it's quite remarkable how that has lived with me and given me greater insight years later in a role like this.

MOSLEY: How did that role give you insight? - because I will tell you I watched "The Pianist" again, and then I watched "The Brutalist." And so I kind of watched them back to back. And, of course...

BRODY: Did you? Wow.

MOSLEY: ...As you said - yeah. There - I know - some heavy times but really, like, a very - it was really important for me to watch it that way, and I'm glad I did. As you said, they are two very different films, and your characters are different. But they do feel like, to me, that they are speaking to each other. I don't know if that's the right way to put it. Maybe it's that they both hit a similar emotional note. I'm wondering how you see that.

BRODY: Well, they both reference this time that has changed the shape and face of this world indelibly. And they both reference how intolerance and oppression and antisemitism and forces that are ugly exist and have deprived us of so much beauty in this world. This movie, "The Brutalist," is a fictional story. And the reason it's a fictional story is because when Brady and Mona were doing their research to try and write a film about a European architect who survived the Nazi occupation and carried on his work in America, there were none to be found because they'd all been killed.

MOSLEY: Yeah.

BRODY: And then Brady and Mona had to find references of other wonderful creatives who were similar and - like Marcel Breuer, who has left a wonderful legacy of work, you know...

MOSLEY: As an architect.

BRODY: ...As an architect and - but had left in the mid-'30s, fortunately. And so I think the films obviously speak to this horrific time and speak to the power of art and the beauty and the capacity for the human spirit to endure and the power of - the ability to create beauty and lightness amidst darkness and to find purpose in art to transcend that darkness.

MOSLEY: The use of silence in both of the films is also really powerful. In "The Pianist," the silence is because Szpilman is alone in his hiding from the Nazis. But in "The Brutalist," from my view, the silence plays another role. It plays a lens into the life of an immigrant. Like, on a very practical sense, when you are coming to a new country and you don't speak the language well, you are other. You are an outsider. As you're saying, like, that's a lonely experience. And so there are probably huge swaths of time where there is silence, especially when you don't have your family with you.

BRODY: And you don't have the words. You don't have the vocabulary or confidence to speak in another language. You know, I can understand a fair amount of French, but I'm very reticent to start speaking, especially when I'm in France, because I'm just not confident with that. And, you know, the pressure of coming to a new land and trying to communicate and express yourself in a way is very hard for many people. And - but, yeah, I see what you're saying.

A lot of the silence that exists or does not exist in a film is also up to the filmmaker and the editor. And, you know, the beauty of this film - and you can correct me if you feel differently, but in spite of its length, it does not feel long. And the beauty of its length is that you are afforded moments that feel very real and personal because you can sit with the characters and experience those moments, and they aren't truncated in an effort to keep a scene lively and edgy for the sake of pace. And that takes a very confident and brave filmmaker and one who understands the nuance of language and storytelling and trusts in his actors and gives them the space and honors those magical moments that can be created.

: Adrien Brody, speaking to Tonya Mosley last month. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Tonya Mosley's interview with Adrien Brody from last month. He's nominated for Best Actor at this Sunday's Academy Awards for his starring role as Laszlo Toth in "The Brutalist."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

MOSLEY: I know you've been acting since you were very young. How old were you when you first started?

BRODY: I think my first professional job was 12 years old. You know, before acting, I started doing magic, and I was - you could call it a professional job. I mean, I think I earned $50 to do a children's birthday party in its entirety. But I loved magic, and I found that the storytelling that's involved, in addition to creating the illusion, was a gateway into an understanding of performance and precision in performance. But I found a love for acting at a very, very young age and then was fortunate to work pretty consistently over the years. I didn't have a big career for many years, but I was a working actor, and I have always been very grateful for that.

MOSLEY: Twelve years old is a remarkably young age to feel so directed and passionate in what you do. Were your parents leading you? Were you leading the charge? How did it come about that you took this on at that age?

BRODY: Yeah. I just joked about it last night. I said, you know, acting, you know, beats working for a living. And, you know, it is very hard work, in all seriousness. But it is such a joy, and it's always different. And I always had a very curious spirit, and that curiosity of my childhood lives on in me. And, you know, I grew up in New York City. I grew up in Queens. I took the train all the time. I had to take four trains each way to go to drama school. I got accepted to Performing Arts, and it was a public school, but it gave me a wonderful foundation early on.

MOSLEY: It wasn't just a public school. You're talking about the school that - the high school that the film "Fame" was based on, right? That's where you went to high school.

BRODY: Yes.

MOSLEY: Yeah.

BRODY: Yeah, it's not merely a public school, but it was - it's a remarkable school. But it was a public high school, meaning I was - by being selected and making it into the drama department, I was given four acting classes a day within the public school system, which is remarkable and was very helpful for me. But along the way to get to school, I'd have to take the train. And I learned so much about character, of, you know, witnessing characteristics and you name it.

MOSLEY: Watching people. Yes.

BRODY: Yeah, watching people.

MOSLEY: What was that first role? What were your roles when you were first starting out at 12?

BRODY: I was doing theater. I'd first done some work with Elizabeth Swados at BAM, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And I'd gotten an off-Broadway play in the Lower East Side that I, you know, take the train in from after junior high school and go to work and try not to get jumped in the East Village (laughter) and, you know, go to work each day. And, you know, I loved it. I really loved it. And at just turning 14 - you know, I'd just turned 14 - I had booked the lead role in a public television film, so I went off to Nebraska and shot a movie

MOSLEY: You talk quite a bit about your mother and your father's influence. Your mother, this noted photographer - she used to be a staff photographer for The Village Voice. You say, like, people will say to you, oh, you are the son of Sylvia, because she's so well respected. And your father is an educator. But I'm curious. Growing up, like, how did your mother's work and seeing her in her creativity maybe influence your thoughts on, perceptions on what you could be? And had you thought about being anything else? Was acting just, like, a foregone conclusion?

BRODY: It's a lovely, lovely question. And, you know, my parents are a unit. You know, they've always stood together in embrace of me and in nurturing me and my individuality and not suppressing my individuality and my rambunctious nature as a child, and my enthusiasm and curiosity of the world. And they've only enhanced that. And my mother's work has been so influential on me as an artist. And my - first of all, and me encountering acting is the result of her having an assignment to photograph the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which preceded my education in Performing Arts, where I started as a very young boy, because she had seen an acting - they had acting classes for children that were - she saw in me what all these kids were doing, and she had that intuition. So even just encountering it came as a result of her photographic work.

But then I am also the son, only son, of a photographer. So I am very much a focal point in front of a lens that came from an artist's eye. And I also witnessed her imagery and her immortalization of my city and the world through that very beautiful, specific lens since birth. And whereas I grew up with film everywhere in my home, negatives being hung from the showers and film canisters in the tub and the smell of fixative in the dark room smelling like home and my mother - and film test prints on record racks all strewn around the floor in front of the landing in front of my bedroom. And so since I could crawl, I was seeing imagery everywhere, and beautiful imagery. And I think that made art and its accessibility very tangible and available.

: Adrien Brody speaking to Tonya Mosley last month. This Sunday, he'll be competing for a Best Actor Oscar at the 97th Academy Awards, televised live by ABC. Coming up, another Oscar contender. It's a film from Latvia called "Flow," nominated for both Best Animated Feature and Best International Film. Critic-at-large John Powers has a review. This is FRESH AIR.

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. "Flow" is an animated movie from Latvia that follows an unlikely collection of animals brought together by a massive flood that overwhelms the countryside. The film, which is now streaming on Max, already won animation prizes from, among others, the Golden Globes, the New York Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics. And it's received Oscar nominations for both best animated feature and best international film. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, says that "Flow" is, quite simply, wonderful.

JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: Perhaps the most famous line in ancient Greek thought comes from the philosopher Heraclitus, who said, you cannot step into the same river twice. That's because reality is not a static thing but an ever-changing flux. The fluidity of life runs through "Flow," a marvelous animated movie from Latvia, which has already been showered with acclaim. Directed by Gints Zilbalodis, it takes a simple premise - a sundry crew of animals get caught in a flood - and, without a single word being uttered, transports us into a radiant fantasy. At once fun and affecting, "Flow" made me think of everything from "Spirited Away" and "The Incredible Journey" to the story of Noah and the recent floods in North Carolina.

"Flow" centers on a slate-gray cat, whose home is a big house in the forest surrounded by larger-than-life feline sculptures. It sleeps upstairs in a double bed whose emptiness offers our first inkling that there are no people about. And indeed, no humans will appear in the film. Instead, we follow this watchful, eloquent-eyed loner as it prowls around and gets chased by a pack of dogs, a pursuit interrupted by a deluge that comes whooshing towards them. The water keeps rising higher and higher. And just as the cat is about to be washed away, it's able to jump on a sailboat occupied by, of all things, a capybara. Soon they're joined by a scene-stealing lemur, who has scavenged various human knickknacks, like the mirror it keeps looking at itself in. It's like the opening of a joke - a cat, a capybara and a lemur walk into a bar.

As the three float together on their small ark, they're joined by a golden retriever and a predatory secretary bird, which boasts a crazy-beautiful headdress of feathers and a body like an eagle's glued onto a heron's legs. This odd band of survivors seeks to ride out the flood, a dangerous enterprise that forces them to work together and leads them to rescue others in distress, even if they don't always want to.

Zilbalodis pays these animals the respect of observing them closely. He deftly captures the cat's yawns, the movements of the lemur's ringed tail as it's preening, and the amiable torpor of the capybara, a creature whose meme-inducing cuteness was recently celebrated in The New Yorker by Gary Shteyngart. Foregoing all dialogue but using genuine animal sounds, "Flow" is a long way from "Zootopia" or Eddie Murphy's smart-aleck donkey in "Shrek." While it does humanize its characters a bit - my own beloved cat, Nico, would sooner drown than team up with a lemur - "Flow" captures the way animals behave in the wild, as in the ruthless fight for dominance between two secretary birds, which leaves one of them unable to fly.

The movie weaves together bursts of adventure - your heart may pound as the cat has to swim for dear life - with poetic moments of transcendence I won't spoil by describing. Like Miyazaki, Zilbalodis uses animation to conjure a big, thrilling world of imagination. Where too much American animation feels frantic - desperate to keep our attention - "Flow's" images possess a kinetic elegance. They have the alluring immersiveness of a video game, complete, alas, with a few visual glitches you won't find in Pixar. Then again, this is not a big-budget Hollywood project. It was made on the open-source software Blender and costs just $3.7 million. To put this in perspective, that's less than one-fiftieth the budget of "Inside Out 2."

"Flow" is conceived as a universal story that weaves together magic and realism. While the cat and dogs could live in our own neighborhood, the rest of the cast comes from the likes of Latin America, Africa and Madagascar. There's even a whale from the briny deep that surges up, almost biblically, from the floodwaters. This whale's appearance inland is one of the film's suggestions - melancholy but never overt - that the great flood we're seeing may be a product of climate change. Yet "Flow" is far from a political tract. Rather, it's a classic fable about learning to adapt to life's ever-changing flow, no matter how dire things may sometimes get. And like most classic fables, it offers an enduring lesson - a group of creatures overcome their differences and learn to help one another. It's solidarity, not selfishness, that will save them.

BIANCULLI: John Powers reviewed the animated film "Flow," which is up for two Oscars and is now streaming on Max.

On Monday's show, how life can change in a second. The first film by Hanif Kureishi, 1985's "My Beautiful Laundrette," starred Daniel Day-Lewis, was directed by Stephen Frears and won Kureishi an Oscar for best screenplay. In 2022, he fell, and when he regained consciousness, his limbs were paralyzed. He'll talk about life before and after the fall. I hope you can join us.

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BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez (ph). For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.

(SOUNDBITE OF HELEN SUNG AND HARLEM QUARTET'S "SUNGBIRD")

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