John Turturro could pick your pocket (if he wanted to)

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest John Turturro stars in a new movie that I'll tell you about in a minute. He's been riveting ever since the early years of his career, like in the film Five Corners, in which his character is totally unhinged and throws his mother out the window. And in the Coen Brothers film Miller's Crossing, as a bookie who's skimmed money from a gangster and is begging for his life as he's about to be executed in the woods. He was also in the Coen Brothers films Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, and Oh Brother Where Art Thou? He was convincing as a racist in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, and was also in Lee's films Jungle Fever, Mo' Better Blues, and Clockers. Skipping ahead to the recent past, he's given great performances in the HBO series The Night Of and The Plot Against America. And he's in the Apple TV series Severance. Now he stars in the new film The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. He loves playing people who are morally complex, neither all good nor all bad, and his character in Pickpocket is a great example. DeTuro stars as Harry, a skilled pickpocket who's becoming obsolete because of technology that he hasn't learned to use. He doesn't have a cell phone or a computer. Wallets he steals have lots of credit cards but little cash. The watches he's been slipping off his victim's wrists haven't been worth much. He's financially on the edge, but he needs money to take care of himself. But he needs money to take care of his wife, who is unresponsive, probably from the lasting effects of a stroke. The story takes a turn when he steals the backpack of a college-age kid who turns out to be the grandson of a crime boss. John DeTuro, welcome back to Fresh Air. I love this new movie. You're terrific in it. Thank you for coming today. Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure. So you did a lot of research for this. You even like understudied a pickpocket/magician, not musician. If we were on the New York subway, would you be able to pick my pocket? Are you skilled enough to do that now? Well, it depends what kind of pockets you have, what you're wearing. Horizontal pockets that are really tight, with tight jeans, are hard. Back pockets are easier. Overcoats, you know, pockets are looser. Well, your backpack is on your back and your zipper isn't completely, you know, zipped up. Then your hand would be in it if you were a pickpocket. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I basically did scout a lot of people and I had my hands in certain places, but a lot of times I thought, well, if I take it out, then if I get caught, what am I supposed to say? You know, I'm doing research. Oh, an actor. Yeah, I'm doing research. Yeah, I don't know if that would, you know, would fly, you know. But I did it, you know, in the production office and on the set all the time. I was practicing and Apollo Robbins, who I read a profile of in the New Yorker, who is a brilliant magician pickpocket who had half-brothers who were criminals, he really helped me, gave me exercises and worked with me. Usually, pickpockets have worked as teams, a man and a woman, a lot of the time. Oh, for distraction? Yeah, for one person sets the other person up and moves them around because you don't come in directly in your line of vision. You come in from the side. You go from the sort of the social situation to a little more personal until you can get really intimate with the person. The whole idea is that they're not going to feel what you do. But if you have a leather watch, a leather wristband, you know, he can take it right off of you with one hand and that was something I practiced again and again and again. God, I have enough trouble taking off my wristwatch. I know. I'm not sure how you do that. Yeah, he's, but a lot of it is misdirection. It's a violation, obviously, but it's a non-violent crime. And you are taking, when people did carry cash, they're spending money. You're not wiping them out. You may take your wristwatch. You're not stealing their bank account. No, you're not stealing their bank account. Like people do digitally now. That's right. It's a whole different thing. And it was a tradition for a long time. And a lot of the pickpockets came from, you know, broken homes, orphanages, and they formed these little families that they would bail each other out. And they would work certain shifts with agreements, sometimes with the police, who would get a little taste of the action from them. Were you ever in Oliver and had to sing, you've got to pick a pocket or two? No, I directed Oliver for my mom's church with my mom in it and my brother, St. Clair's church, I think, while I was in college. So I directed it. Yes. Okay. Good preparation. Yeah, good preparation. I'm a Dickens fan, obviously. But I've read a lot of different books, especially the book, Noah Segan, who wrote a beautiful script. He gave me a book called Whiz Mob by the fellow who wrote The Big Con that the Sting is based on. And it's sort of a sociological work, because he interviews all these men and women pickpockets in the book. And you see their sort of code and their morality of what they do and what they won't do. Like they won't steal from someone who's drunk or a really old person who, you know, has difficulty moving. It's the criminal with a code kind of thing. Yeah, no, they actually do. Do that. The emotional center of the movie revolves around family. His wife, like your character's wife, is, I'm not sure how, I said catatonic. Well, she's obviously not responsive. Yes. Yeah. But like, what is her medical condition? Do you know? Well, it was never really specified in there. But obviously, sometimes people have a stroke and they don't respond. But their functions are okay, you know. But obviously, he has to do a lot of intimate things, you know, with her, you know, carry her up the stairs, you know, bathe her, clean her, comb her hair, make sure she's hydrated. Worry about her catheter. Yeah, her catheter. So there's all these things. And I was sort of struck when I read the script because I thought it's so. So well structured. It has an Aristotelian almost structure. It doesn't take place in 24 hours, but it's 36 hours, really. And with this propulsive tension that's inherent in the script, there's this juxtaposed with this tenderness of this man who's never really taken care of anyone, as we discovered later. But now for the last, you know, bunch of years, he's understood what it is to care for someone or to use that most ambiguous of words to love someone. Because that's an action. It's not a word. And I think people are capable of growth. I don't think they change, but they're capable of growth. And you do see him treating everyone else in the movie very gentlemanly. You know, you know, he's always giving tips and, you know, trying to say thank you to people. And he depends on the kindness of strangers, too. But he reciprocates. So you've been in the position of being a caregiver. I have. Your brother had paranoid schizophrenia. Yeah. OCD. Yeah. Bipolar. Yeah. It's a lot. Depression. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. And you became. You became his guardian after both your parents were dead. What did that mean to be his guardian? Oh, well, I was his legal guardian because he inherited some money when I sold my mom's house. But I had to make sure he had a place to live. Once he was let go of when the hospital discharged him, he was at Creedmoor for a long time. Yeah. He was there for like seven years, right? Eleven years he was there. I didn't realize they had discharged. They had discharged him. So I had to find different residences. And then I put him in an apartment. I had to hire all the aides and then someone who was in charge of the aides so I could function. He could be very abusive and very unpredictable. So you never knew what was going to happen. So I was always on sort of high alert. No matter where I was in the world, I tried to protect my own family from him. And then eventually he did sort of, we finally got him on a medicine which he could take monthly. And he sort of, if schizophrenics live long enough, they sort of plateau. They're not as volcanic. But there were times he'd be in a hospital because he acted up in, he got thrown out of a lot of apartments. It was really hard to do because there's no system. For mentally ill people, they wind up on the streets. But I know he depended on me. And I had major effect on my life as a person. And I did learn a lot about myself, how much I could withstand and how, uh, how I learned to protect myself somewhat because you have to, you have to be able to sort of form a little barrier around you. Was he violent and did he ever like threaten you in a very serious way or, or members of your family or your parents? Yeah, he was, he was, he was violent. Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons he went to the mental hospital was because I was worried about my mom because she was a widow. That's right. It was, uh, yes. And, uh, and yes, he, he could be violent and he also had a lot of violence done to him because he would explode, you know, sometimes. And, uh, uh, you know, the thing about mental hospitals is that they don't, he did very well when he worked on the animal farm, when he had something to do, or he went to the living museum in Creedmoor, he was able to paint and play music. They need activities too, you know? And, uh, he was a very complex and very perceptive person. He could find your weakness, like within 30, a 30 minute ratio, you know, he'd, he'd find your weakness and, uh, and he could be quite generous. Not that he had that much to be generous with. Uh, he was a very good musician and, uh, he just, he, I guess I learned a lot about human behavior with him and all the people around him. You had mentioned in an interview that, um, you had renovated your mother's home and then your brother burned it down. That's right. He burned down the house. Intentionally or accidentally? He never said the truth until later on. And then he said he, he put a cigarette. My mother was at her neighbor's house and, uh, he wanted to see, and he left it. He put it on the couch and he walked out because they have these compulsions and, uh, and he just left it there. He didn't put it out. Uh, and, uh, you know, I, I had renovated the whole house with my dear friend, Brandon Cole. And, uh, it was after my dad died. It was something to help my mom, you know, recover from her grief. And that happened. And that, that was, uh, Is that how he ended up in Creedmoor? He did. He did. He ended up there because, he was starting to get violent. And one of my mom's friends, you know, called the police while I was, uh, away, far away. I was doing this Primo Levi film in the Ukraine, The Truce. And, uh, it was very hard, you know, to navigate all this. Uh, at the same time, I, you know, that I was able to still care for him and maybe use the word love him is, I didn't know if I, that was ever possible. And I, and I did. And we actually became pretty close to last like five years of his life. We, because he calmed down and I could see my brother again. Uh, and he was on the right medicine and we had the right, uh, uh, health advocate. I, you know, I found this woman who really helped me, uh, Heidi Levy. And, uh, she really, she, she had a big effect on my life. Yeah. Your father had a volatile temper. And between your father's temper and your brother's mental health problems, did you not only have to be vigilant all the time? Cause there might be an eruption. Did you have to like study your family, their expressions to see when was an explosion coming, either your father's temper or your brother's, you know, violence. Um, and if you did like, was that helpful to being an, I, I, you know, helpful to being an actor because you have to study people and then reproduce the human nature that you see around you. I, I, my father was in the war. So he had PTSD in world war II. He was in D-Day and got blown up and everything. And he was on a destroyer. It hit a mine, you know, uh, he was, they were in the front, the destroyers, and they were stuck there for like two or three days. Uh, so he had that. So him and my brother was not, it was not a great combination. And I was sort of the person who would calm things down. I'm the middle child, but I became like my mom's, you know, protector for, uh, for a lot of, uh, my life growing up. And, uh, not that I, I chose to do that. I just did it. I guess you have that nature or you don't, but my mother and father were, they were sort of like the honeymooners, as if, as if maybe Charles Bukowski or Joe Orton, you know, wrote the honeymooners. Uh, uh, but it had that dynamic cause my mother was very, you know, dry with that and funny. Uh, but you learn how to diffuse the situation. And, you know, when I played, when I was younger and I played all these explosive characters and stuff, I understood the reality of that versus just the imaginative reality of that. I was, I saw a lot of violence growing up and I was in the middle of it a bunch of times. So I want to play a scene from an early movie of yours. This is from 1987 and it's the movie that really got you your first attention. Um, it's, it's, it's the reason Spike Lee cast you and do the right thing. Cause he'd seen this movie. The movie is five corners. That's from 1987 and it's a crime film by John Patrick Shanley, who also wrote Moonstruck. Directed by Tony bill. I mean, five corners was directed by Tony bill. And it's about a group of four young New Yorkers in the 1960s. You play a violent sociopath named Heinz. And this scene is the climax of the film where the cops are looking for your character as a suspect in a murder. And you go to your mother's apartment and the mother's kind of unhinged too. And at the end of the conversation with her, your character Heinz hugs her, picks her up and then throws her through the glass window. And she falls to the street, which is several stories below. So here is my guest, John Turturro as Heinz and Rose Gregorio as his mother. The cops been here. Yeah. Policeman came and asked about you before, but I told him he wasn't lost. He was just out. I'm going to die tonight, ma. No, let me play some music. Just once. Just once. Before I die. I'd like you to see me. I see you. Who am I? You're my little Heinz. Where have I been? I don't know. I've been in jail, ma. No. I've been in jail. And now I'm out and the cops are coming for me again. And they're going to kill me. No, I'm going to go. I'm going to go. What's my name? Heinz. And who am I to you? You're my boy. Now what's your boy going to do tonight? Tell me. Tell me! He's going to die. thank you ma oh yeah it's a heavy duty scene well you know john patrick shanley you know he did write it i executed it we had done a play danny in a deep blue sea before that and john really championed me to get this part it was a great part uh it was a very you know showy part but it had a lot of different levels to it and uh because of certain experiences i had in my life john knew that that that i could embody that you know character and uh well uh it would yeah i remember my dad was still alive i took my mom and dad to see it and uh of course it was my mother was sobbing she was to the left of me and my father was like he was enjoying how bad i was in the film you know he was getting not bad acting but just that i was such a bad character yeah bad person and uh he was like oh my god you're like so you know it's a great character it's like richard widmark when he exactly when he throws his mother down the stairs that down the stairs so uh but they both you know uh and john had a very complex relationship with his own family you know i i don't ever felt that way towards my mother my mother was probably the person who influenced me more than anyone because she was so encouraging to me uh and and and sensitive uh so uh but that movie it wasn't a big commercial success but a lot of people saw me in that movie and spike was one of them and cohen's and everyone so yeah yeah in that scene your eyes are kind of bulging out of your head and i i don't know if you were aware of that while you were filming it but i was wondering like if you'd seen that look on your brother's face oh yeah oh yeah And I saw it on other people around him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, my brother said to me once, he said, you know, I've given you a lot of material. And I said, you know, you're really right. You're right. I said, but at a high cost. My guest is John Turturro. He stars in the new film, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. We'll talk more after a break. And you can keep up with Fresh Air by subscribing to our podcast and leave us a review. It helps a lot. Thank you. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nesberg, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terry Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive. It's a fun read. It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at WHYY.org. And look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. I'm going to play another movie scene. Okay. And this is another one. You're the. This is Miller's Crossing. Oh, God. Okay. This is from 1990. It's a Coen Brothers film noir set in 1929. And it starred you and Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney. You play Bernie, a bookie who's been skimming money off of fixed games. And Gabriel Byrne's character, Tommy, is a bookie. Has been the right-hand man to the city's political boss. But he's been ordered to kill you, to kill Bernie. So you're both driven to the edge of the woods. He's ordered and is surprised to be ordered to kill you. He's given a gun. He walks behind you and marches you deeper and deeper into the woods while you turn around and beg him not to kill you. So here we go. Tommy, you can't. You can't do this. You don't bump, guys. You're not like those animals back there. It's not right, Tom. They can't make us do this. It's the wrong situation. They can't make us different people than we are. We're not muscle, Tom. I never killed anybody. I used a little information for a chisel, that's all. It's my nature, Tom. I can't help it. Somebody hits me an angle, I play it. I don't deserve to die for that. Do you think I do? I'm just a grifter, huh, Tom? I'm out of nobody. But I'll tell you what. I never crushed a friend, huh, Tom? I never crushed a friend. No, you won't bet. We're not like those animals. This is not us. This is a half-dream. It's a dream, Tommy. I'm praying to you. I can't die. I can't die. Out here in the woods. Like a dumb animal. In the woods like a dumb animal. Like a dumb animal. Like a dumb animal. I can't. I can't. I can't die out here in the woods. Like a dumb animal. I can't. Die. John, that is such an amazing scene. I'm sitting here smiling, listening back to it. I mean, it's. You're in agony out of fear. But I'm. And I'm smiling because it's such a great performance. It's just so. I hesitate to use the word entertaining in a scene where there's so much at stake. But it really is so entertaining. And I'm wondering what the script was like. If there were any directions or if the Coen brothers gave you direction because it would be a totally different scene if you just did it straight without all the whimpering and the pleading and your voice going, like, two octaves higher and breaking and. No, I mean, it was a well-written scene. Oh, no, it's very well-written. But you didn't have to do it the way you did. And the way you did it is so great. So can you talk about the process of getting to the level of hysteria that you reach? Well, you know, I did a lot of research and I prepared. you know, interviewing different people because I wanted to get a certain sort of cadence and voice to it. I interviewed my accountant, Abe, who's a very honest person. And I had him read the script for me and I had him do it in Yiddish, too. And he had certain cadences. And in the first scene, it does sound like Abe. And I wanted to look like Leopold in Lobe. I think it was Lobe I wanted to look like. Those are the two famous killers. Yeah. So when I was doing that, I had had an experience when I was young. Some guy was late at night. We drove into a schoolyard, my friends and I on our bikes, coming home from a party. He was shooting baskets. I was a basketball player. And we drove in to want to play a two-on-two because there was three of us and he was shooting baskets. And he thought we were there to rob him. And when I came in with my bike, I came to a stop. And he was a policeman. And he thought we were there to rob him or something. And he took out his gun and he put it right to my head. And I remember just going like, oh, my God, I'm going to die here, you know. And I just said, we just wanted to play basketball with you. And he said, oh, I was afraid. And my body just tightened up. And then he said, okay. And then we did play. And I couldn't move. My legs were like concrete, I remember. But, you know, I realized in the scene, there's a gun going to be pointing at me. And I have to kind of, you know, believe that. And the guy who is not a stone-cold killer. So you do everything to persuade him to let me go. You know, so I felt like, let me just throw the kitchen sink at him. So your father was a builder. I think he had his own construction company for a while. He did. You worked for your father doing construction work? Yeah, I did. I was like a rough carpenter. Yeah, many, many summers of my life. Yeah. I did some cement work. I was a laborer. Yeah. So I don't know how tall the buildings were, but did you have to work on a high scaffold? Yeah, I did. What's the highest floor? I didn't work on a scaffold, but I worked on the open floors, like, you know, 80 stories up, you know, 70 stories up. It was nerve-wracking. Nerve-wracking. It would terrify me. Do you know that famous, oh, no, of construction workers on the Empire State Building? Yeah, Lewis High. And they're eating their lunch on scaffolding, like a gazillion stories high? Yeah. I mean, I saw people fall. Oh, no, really? My father saw lots of people, yeah. I mean. Oh, my God. It's a very dangerous world. And, you know, these people are working, they're really sacrificing their bodies to do the work, and they put themselves in all kinds of dangerous situations. I think of the world of building and construction, work is a very macho world. And I'm assuming that when you were working, doing that kind of work with your father, that it was the early days of the renaissance of feminism when a lot of construction workers at lunchtime would sit around wolf-whistling at women as they walked by, and women were starting, were no longer being flattered by that. They found it really offensive. Yeah, like, my father would never do that. So, as a, he never did that. But some of the guys did, yeah. But it was true, absolutely, you know. And also, it was, everyone was changing. It was the miniskirts and everything, and, you know, the go-go boots and everything. So, a lot of men were, you know, were at sea at that time. But I remember that really strongly with my mom getting together with all her girlfriends, and it was sort of like a powwow, you know, of these women. And I realized early on, in my life, that many of these households, which were tumultuous, and from all different backgrounds, that it was the women who were keeping everyone together. They're the ones who held every, they were the glue, you know. And I felt very comfortable, and I still feel very comfortable working, you know, with women. And I think it's because of my mom, you know. And she was a dressmaker, and when she made dresses, I would help her with the patterns. I worked with my, with my dad, but I helped my mom. I even, sometimes when she made wedding dresses, and our dummy was too small, and the lady was too tall, she would ask me, would you put it on? And, you know, so I can, I can do all the hems and the beads. And my father came in once, and I had like a wedding dress on. He was looking at me, and I was like, I don't care. You know what I mean? I'm helping my mother. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. So, one of your breakthrough roles was in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. You played the racist son of Sal, the owner of the pizzeria. And Spike played Mookie, who is the pizza delivery guy. And there's like a kind of famous scene where Spike's saying to you, like, I don't understand how you can hate black people, because, like, your favorite athletes are black, your favorite musicians are black. Like, how is this even possible? Right. Um. It's a phenomenon that exists until to this very day. Absolutely. So racially and ethnically, what kind of like neighborhood, schools did you go to? I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood for the first six years of my life in Hollis, Queens. It was in a little garden apartment. I had no white friends. My best friend was black. The guy who was the nerdy guy was black. The bully was black. And we had some white people on our block, but I didn't really have any friends my age that were white. And I think that had a huge musically, friendship-wise, sense of humor-wise, had a huge influence on me. And when I moved to Rosedale, it was more of an Italian, Irish, and somewhat Jewish neighborhood. And that was the first time I felt kind of. Prejudiced against like the color of my skin. Everyone thought I was Puerto Rican. So I found it much more aggressive personally to me. Even from people who were supposed to be from a similar background to me. And then later on, I went to a school which was somewhat integrated, PS38. And then I got bussed out because it was bussing to IS-59, which was all black. It was a 90% black. And 10% Jewish, the school. And that's where I learned to play basketball and made friends. But it was a very volatile time because it was the whole, you know, 1968. I'm black and I'm proud. James Brown was the beginning of Black Panther Pledge. And that was a whole. I had to learn to navigate that all over again. So my experiences growing up have sort of helped me, I think, navigate. It's a multicultural world. And I don't feel comfortable being in an all-white neighborhood. And Spike always laughs at me and goes, well, I know you're black and all this stuff. But I'm from, like, Sicily, which is a melting pot, you know. I have a lot of other things. Your family's from Sicily. Well, my mother's family is. Right, yeah. My father's from Puglia. But I think that really bonded me and Spike because he grew up in an Italian neighborhood. And so. Yeah, I didn't know that about him. I thought he grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant. No, he grew up in Cobble Hill, mostly. Yeah. And his best friend was Italian. So he. It just was like. I was like, oh, my God, this is, like, someone I know my whole life. We're three weeks apart. And when he showed me the movie, I said, I know a lot of people like this. And I said, I'd rather play the racist guy because it's like, that's what it's about, the movie. And he doesn't have a Ku Klux Klan hood on him. He's just the guy who sells pizza. And I worked at a pizzeria before that. And the guy wasn't that different from the guy I was playing. So the thing was to expose it in a way. So I want to play. We've played a couple of your really early movies, your breakthrough roles. I want to play something more recent. So this is a scene from The Night Of, which is just a terrific series on HBO by Steve Zalian. And Richard Price. And Richard Price is just such a great writer of dialogue. He's got such a great ear. So this is a miniseries. You play John Stone, a lawyer who visits police precincts and night courts looking for low-level clients who can plead out for a flat fee. Like, you're smart and savvy, but you're often treated like a joke by other attorneys and police officers because you look so disheveled. And because you have bad eczema, especially on your face. And sometimes, like, one doctor tells you to, like, put Crisco on your feet, wrap it in, like, the kind of plastic wrap you wrap food in, and then wear sandals. And how are you going to show up as an attorney that way? But that's the position that you're in, although your feet briefly clear up. So one night, you're visiting a client in prison, and you notice somebody whose name is Naz, played by Riz Ahmed. You notice him in a precinct cell and can tell there's something different about this kid who's being accused of murder. And you present yourself as his lawyer. This is the second time you visit him in his cell. And you've noticed that Naz has asthma, like you're picking up on that. You're asthmatic, huh? It used to happen when I was a kid. I know when I hear it, you might grow out of it. It's the same family as eczema. Well, that just keeps getting worse. I'm not sure how it's going to play. What? The asthma. It might not be a bad thing. But then again, a knife-wielding, heavy-breathing sex brute is not a pretty picture. Sex brute? Mm. Okay, you need to understand what happened here, all right? We were at her place, we were drinking, I don't drink, and she started giving me all kinds of. I want to tell you something, and it's the most important thing you'll ever hear in your entire life, so don't not hear it. Shut it. They come up with their story, we come up with ours. The jury gets to decide which they like best. Now, the good news is, we get to hear what their story is first, before we have to tell them ours. So we keep our mouths shut until we know what they're doing. You keep saying story like I'm making it up. I want to tell you the truth. You really don't. I don't want to be stuck with the truth. Not until I have to be. But you need to know how. I need to be flexible. That's a great scene. Are there lines of Richard Parsons' dialogue that are still in your head? Oh, yeah. I mean, that was just delicious. The research was delicious. I've worked with Richard before. I know his pace. I know his rhythms. I've read a bunch of his books. Well, you're in Clockers, which is adapted from his novel. Yeah. Yeah. And Zalian was. You know, he was such a specific. There was nothing that bored him. He was into minutiae, you know, at all times. And I had a lot of time to prepare. And I had many good tutors, especially Kenny Montgomery, who's a defense lawyer. He was tremendously helpful to me. And, you know, all this stuff comes from the real world. It comes from these guys who are. You know, they're looking around to find clients when you go to the courts. They're selling themselves with their cards and stuff like that. And what interested me about the whole series was this guy is really smart. But he doesn't have necessarily the stomach for it or the constitution for it. Because there's a big cost to hold someone's life in your hands if you at all are sensitive. And so there was, once again, this contradiction, which. Which was in many of the characters, but especially John Stone. Did you learn how to scratch and itch? Because there's one scene in particular. Yeah. I mean, your character is always itching because of the eczema. And right before you're closing your marks to the jury, you're like itching all over. And you're just like scratching all over. And I kind of related to that. Yeah. I mean, it's. I have very sensitive skin and a lot of itch. So did you research? Did you research itch? Yeah. I did all my proper research. How did you research itch? Well, there's different people, what they would do. Some people use a tool. Some people use a chopstick. You know, they put something on the end of it if they can't reach with their fingernail. And it's a terrible thing, you know. And it gets worse when you get stressed out, you know. And it affects, like, your nervous system. Yeah. And it gets worse when you scratch. There's a whole, like, scratch itch cycle. What was interesting was walking down the street when I was really covered in it. And people would just look away. Oh. They would just. When I was in full makeup, I was walking down the street. Oh, in full makeup. Okay. Were you wearing sandals and saran wrap? Yeah. I wore sandals. Yeah. They didn't want to look. A lot of times people don't want to look. You know, that's the thing. So that's interesting. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. Okay, I want to ask you about an op-ed that you wrote for The Washington Post. And this one, this was, like, a very upsetting article to read. So this was after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And it's about how your grandmother, your mother's mother, had a botched abortion. She already had, like, six kids, and she got pregnant with the seventh. And her older sister, your great aunt, told her, Look, you have to support your family. You can't afford to have another kid. And she gave her this potion that was unknowing to both of them, that was toxic. And it ended up killing her. And you write that it affected three generations of your family. What was the fate of your mother after her mother died? No one would accept the other kids because the other families had too many of their own. So she went to St. Joseph's Orphanage, which was run by Irish nuns. Her family was Sicilians. So there was Sicilian spoken, and they told her, you know, you can't do that. So all the kids were separated from each other. They all went to different orphanages. But it affected her whole life. And then her father got involved with this other woman who was my mother's mother's friend. Lena, her name was. And she came and took her out after six years. And my mother got very close to her. And three years later, she died of a brain hemorrhage. So my mother lost, like, two mothers by the time she was, like, 14. So she had one of these indomitable spirits. Like, she was always optimistic. I don't know how she did that. And she was like sunshine, you know, in our lives. She just was a resilient spirit, like someone in Knights of Kiberia, like the lady in Knights of Kiberia or Sweet Charity. And I also think, in my mind, my mom was the most talented person in our family. She could do anything. There wasn't anything. She could draw. She could sew. She could sing. You know, she could do electrical work. She just was such a competent person. And I think she would have had a huge, you know, career if she would have been given that opportunity. And I used to always see her make dresses for people. I was thinking, my mom shouldn't be on her knees doing this. You know, she should be, like, the person who's running the shop, you know, or whatever. So I take my opportunity not for granted. So you're on the verge of turning 70. I deny that. And it's the age in which I think a lot of actors assume, like, it's going to—good roles are going to be really scarce. And you've been getting, like, great roles. Yeah. You know, in the last few years. I mean, just, like, The Night Of and Severance and, you know, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, your new movie. I mean, these are, like, terrific, terrific roles. Well, 70 is the new 50, I guess. Listen, I try to stay in shape and keep my memory sharp. I think as an actor, if you get the opportunity, you have a bigger toolbox of experience. Yeah. You can't jump over a fence. You can't do it as quickly or run as fast, but you have—you can distill your experiences. Well, neither would your character. Right. That's right. But you can distill things and understand what stillness is and be really precise because your toolbox is much fuller. You've experienced so many things. And I feel very rich in that way right now. I do. I do. And when I see The Only Living Pickpocket, I see a person who has lived a lot of life that way, you know, and that's me, too. Yeah. You know, so. I'll just end on a note about your coat. Oh, my coat. In The Only Living Pickpocket. It is this fabulous tweed coat, like a black and white tweed. And when I was watching the movie, and this was before it was released, and I thought, like, what a fantastic coat. Yes. And I realized, like, you're wearing that because you need to look too well-dressed to be a pickpocket, you know. Right. You look really classy. Right. And why would you pick somebody's pocket if you can afford such a gorgeous coat? You know, a costume changes everything because it's got all the pockets. It's like a piece of armor, sort of like a samurai robe, you know. And it harkens back to those black and white movies, that coat. That you grew up with. That I grew up with and met people from that time. And so, once again, it affects you physically and how you move and everything. So, it's really every little thing I've learned from both of my parents is important. In a building, in a dress, you know, every stitch is important. John Turturro, what a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much. What a pleasure to talk to you. I really, really enjoyed it. John Turturro stars in the new film, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, family caregiving is unpaid labor, but it isn't free. A new AARP study finds out-of-pocket caregiving costs have jumped nearly 60% in just five years. We'll talk with New York Times columnist Paula Spann about what happens when caring for someone you love threatens your own financial future. I hope you'll join us. Fresh Air is exciting. Executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering today from Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Reboldonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Cezanne Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry. Gross.