Oscar and BAFTA nominated actor Wunmi Mosaku

Hello and welcome to the Arts Health and the BBC World Service. I'm Nikki Baby bringing you a star studded and global lineup of guests and some cultural companionship with the best arts and culture conversation from across the BBC. Coming up, Oscar and BAFTA nominated Nigerian British actor Wunmi Musaku talks about how her role as Houdou Priestess Annie in sinners decolonized some of her thinking and connected her to her Yoluba roots. We'll hear from American filmmaker Jared Bush, who's returned to his animated animal kingdom for Zootopia 2. He describes it as his most ambitious film to date. And Norwegian novelist Carl Uveer-Kanalskard talks about the unsympathetic protagonist of his latest novel, The School of Night. Also on the show Oscar-winning American screenwriter Eric Roth on his debut play and adaptation of the 1952 Western High Noon. And Iranian filmmaker Sepede Farsi on making films in restrictive circumstances. That's not all though. My guests in the Arts Health studio today are American comedian actor and writer Josh Sharp. We'll be talking about his extraordinary one-man comedy show Ta-da, later in the show. And we welcome back as our cultural critic, Rihanna Dillan. So before we go any further, do you both have a cultural recommendation for the world this week? Rihanna, you go first. I've picked It's Never Over Jeff Buckley, which is directed by Amy Berg and it's a documentary about the legendary musician Jeff Buckley, who was by all accounts this feminist musician. And it just gives you real insight into who he was and it's a really sensitively drawn documentary because it's looking at him through the eyes of the women who loved him. Including a lot about his mother. Yes. Josh, what about you? Have you got a cultural recommendation for the week? Yes, because she has a new album and tour coming out. I've been doing a deep dive into the work of Peaches, the Berlin-based avant-garde dance artist. I believe she's almost 60 years old and when you watch her live, you realize sort of like every drag queen and like nightlife performer is doing stuff she's been doing since the 90s in Berlin. So she's really mother to a lot of incredible people. Thank you for that. The award-winning Nigerian British actor, Wunmi Musalku, has been delivering powerful performances in acclaimed projects for over a decade now. Many in the UK and more recently in the US. She starred in HBO's Lovecraft Country and plays Hunter B15 in the MCU Disney+ series Loki and in the Deadpool and Wolverine movie. In 2025, she reached a new peak with her role as Hudaupristess Annie in Ryan Kugler's genre-blending film, Sinners. There are legends of people with the gift of making music so true. It can conjure spirits from the past and the future. This gift can bring fame and fortune. Will somebody take me? But it also can piece the veil between life and death. Sinners has been nominated for a record-breaking 16 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan and Best Supporting Actress for Wunmi Musalku. The BBC's Nick Grimshaw asked Wunmi how she got the role. I got called from my agent saying that Ryan Kugler wanted to meet me on his next project. I was like, "I'm in whatever it is. I'm in. If you'll have me." And then I went on Zoom and met him for like, I thought it was going to be like 30 minutes and it was like an hour and a half. I felt like my brain, my heart, everything kind of opened up. He's such a wise and lovely and loving person. And I read these seven pages of Smokin' Annie, that first scene in the shot, and I just was like blown away by the quality of the writing. Then I auditioned with Michael B. Jordan like two days later and they offered me the role in the room and then that was it. I was bonkers. I felt like that was so fast and it was so amazing. You really are the character that you play Annie is really like the sort of heart and soul of this film I felt. And such a grounding presence I thought in the film. How much research did you have to do for Annie because she sort of inhabits her role in the film? Yeah, I feel like I had to do quite a bit in regards to like her face, like she's a who-do practitioner and who does the spiritual practice of like roots and herbs and this connection to the ancestors and the divine and also the earth. And it actually is a derivative of the Euroburst spirituality of EFAR. That was interesting because I'm a Eurobra woman and I didn't know anything about EFAR at all. So actually learning about Annie, I felt like I learnt a lot about myself and my own heritage and the faith systems of the people who I'm from. And so funnily enough, Annie was more like an unlearning of a lot of like preconceived ideas I had of traditional indigenous religions. I've always thought of them as quite scary and like evil and you think of voodoo and you think of James Bond and you think of the crucible. And actually I met these practitioners and the priestesses and they were so loving and so devoted to their ancestry and their purpose and it was just so enlightening and I didn't expect to find a part of myself and feel more grounded in my actual lineage in playing this fictional character. So it was more about unlearning a lot of stuff and decolonizing my mind and yeah and opening up my heart to like other ways and traditions and yeah belief systems. Amazing that you got to go through that journey of discovering that. Yeah, it was amazing. Honestly, I feel like I feel like I've been changed forever through Annie and every character changes you like, you learn more, you understand more about someone else's experience. But Annie is a mom as a person who is a partner that kind of she so love her capacity to love and understand and forgive and move through without needing apologies, needing explanations, just I just need the truth. He like just face me and and look me in the eye and we can we can do anything together. I think that's really Annie, you know. And I'm going to be a circus on her role as Annie in sinners cultural critic, Leanna Dylan is with me in the arts studio along with comedian and performer Josh Sharp Josh as an actor. How did you feel hearing about the way that wouldn't me was changed by playing the role of Annie? You know, I do think most of the actors job is to have like a great deal of empathy. I understand how she would identify with that by living inside of it. I'm also glad I wasn't in the film where I'll tell you her now being like, you know, the more I spent time with blood sucking racist, the more I saw they had a point, you know, it's good that I didn't tap into that role and come out on the other side of the way she did. How often do you think an actor decolonises their thinking via a role? I mean, that's such a fascinating idea, isn't it? And I've genuinely got no idea. But I think especially with films that are more about like the Asian diaspora, I feel like actually it's it must be really hard to decolonize because often especially films that are set in western countries and the US in the UK. We are still looking at it very much through that lens. I think we're still yet to uncopple quite in the same way that I think there is much more awareness of that in African American films. So that someone like Ryan Kugler, his films are so steeped in that from the beginning. What did you make of sinners, historical number of Oscar nominations? Do you think it surprised a lot of people? It did but I'm so happy because it means that the critics and the public are starting to become aligned, which has always been a huge criticism of the award season that kind of critics and voters have no idea what audience is actually one. So with the inclusion of F1 and sinners, it means that actually they are rewarding the films that audiences are going out and they're masses to see. And people go back again and again and again to watch sinners because there is so much to it, there are so many crossovers of genres, you know, it might be a horror film but it's also social commentary, it's also a historical drama, it's also Michael B. Jordan. It's also a history of the blues in some way, isn't it? Lately through Delroy Lindos character as well. What would you like it to win? Ooh, I would be so thrilled if Autumn Durold, Alcapore won for Best Cinematographer because she is the first female cinematographer of color to ever be nominated. And she filmed it in the first female cinematographer to use IMAX. Yes. I mean all of these huge achievements. Yeah, absolutely rewarded. Josh, what would you like sinners to win? I'm with you. I sort of want to win everything. But Best Picture would feel that I'm still feeling very like Justice for Dune, like some of these movies that I like wish had crossed over in that way where they were such populist huge movies, but also brilliant films. So I would love for sinners to win the big girl. Thank you both so much. You're listening to the arts out from the BBC World Service. I'm Nikki Vady. The most successful Hollywood animated movie of all time is Zootopia 2 or Zootro. to in the UK and certain other countries, it's made $1.7 billion since its release last November. Zootopia 2 continues the adventures of rabbit police officer Judy and her partner Nick the Fox as they seek to safeguard harmony in a world where mammals live side by side. Reptiles they believe don't exist in Zootopia until they stumble across something that turns that upside down. Jared Bush is the Oscar winning director of N. Canto and the man at the helm of Zootopia 2. Having co-directed the first movie, he told the BBC's Nicarid why he was keen to return to this animated animal world. It is honestly incredibly fun to spend time there. You know, this world of animals, it's this world where we get to hold up this mirror to our own human nature. You say it's the most ambitious movie that you've made. What makes it the most ambitious movie? There's a number of things. There's one of our sequences where we have literally 50,000 animals all at the same time. So they're all in different outfits, different species dancing differently. The sheer scale of that is unbelievable. Typically our movies have about 1800 shots in it. This one has north of I think 2200 shots in it. And on top of that, it is a new war detective story, but there's this mirror to our human civilization and when people are watching it and people are going back to it's because there's so much to see. Why do you want to do that? Why do you need to go to such a big scale to tell this story? Well, it kind of demands it. You know, I think the first film really sets you in this immersive world. It felt like a believable civilization. That we all say it's built by animals for animals. It requires a different type of thinking. And I also think that audiences, certainly nowadays, to get people to go to theaters, they want spectacle. They want a reason to get off their couch and go and see a movie. And so we really wanted to over deliver. I've got to say it is spectacular and it definitely follows up on the first. The first film in 2016 was also a massive billion dollar hit. It won Oscar for best animated film. So that told the tale of the rabbit Judy Hopps going to the big city with dreams of being a police officer, becoming friends with the sly red fox Nick. Where did the idea come from? Did it arrive fully formed? Did it develop over time? You know, it's one of the great luxuries and benefits of working at Disney Animation. It's taken us about five years to make a film. And most people think, oh, because animation itself takes a long time. It's actually the last year of those five years we're animating it. The other four is us trying to figure out the best way to tell the story. And so for this one very early on, we knew that it had to be about Judy and Nick again. This duo, this unlikely pairing. That was really important to us. People just love spending time with those characters. They're imperfect characters. They make mistakes. At the end of the first film, they really had just come together for 48 hours to crack that case. And we started this one up as saying, okay, well, now what? It's this odd couple that are now deciding they're going to continue to team up with one another. We continue on this one. We really thought about the fact that they are so different. Not just the fact that ones of Fox and ones are rabbit, but the way they view the world is quite different. We have to set another meeting with the chief. Promise we'll be better. You talk back less. Maybe not at all. Yeah, or we go with my playbook and we just lay low. We cannot prove ourselves if we are stuck in that room. And if we complain to chief B, if you'll just make us stay longer, play it smart, stay off the radar and don't let it get to you, okay? When I was watching this, maybe this is just my references I grew up in the 80s. I'm thinking, yeah, that's Eddie Murphy and Nick Nalti. It feels Beverly Hills copy on the story. Yeah, another 48 hours. Those are the reference points that you used. Oh, my gosh. Of course, I mean, I'm also as someone who grew up in the 80s and loved all of those movies. I think there's some 48 hours in there. Some lethal weapon in there for sure. Beverly Hills cop. Absolutely. Those are movies that I remember, you know, as I was growing up and washing those and being really affected by them. But of course, there's a lot of John Hughes in here. There's a ton of Spielberg in here. Obviously, there's direct references to Kubrick. You know, we have a sense of the Lamb's in here. So it is somewhat a love letter to these films that inspired us as we are growing up. Jared Bush talking about Zootopia. And if you're a regular listener to the arts, how you will know that I don't do talking animals. However, my arts are guests today, May, comedian Josh Sharp and cultural critic, Rihanna Dillon. You do talking animals, obviously, you're laughing. I love talking animals. You do, don't you? I do. I hope it's on your tombstone. Doesn't do talking animals. It would be a perfect epitaph for me. Okay. Rihanna, what do you believe gets people into movie theaters? I think it's big names. And I think it's spectacle that people worry that they might miss on their, still probably big enough, flat screens at home. But I think it's the detail. And this is why people love going back again for the same sort of film because they're worried they've missed something the first time. You don't think it's the communal experience? I think there is definitely an element of that. I think especially with something like Hamlet, which we talked about, I think, before Christmas, where there is communal grieving going on. But no, I do, I think it is more about the noise, the immersive experience of the cinema. Josh, what kind of film gets you into a movie theater as opposed to streaming it? I really do like the communal experience. I like things that sort of want you to scream at the screen and be together being like, what the heck did I just see? You know? Rihanna, what did you think of Zootopia too? I mean, did you pick up on the quotes from other movies? Is that very obvious? I wrote down so many and then I was like, I need to stop doing this because it's just distracting because every time I looked down on my no pad to write a no, I was missing another joke on screen. It's so thick and fast and so funny. I love Zootopia 1 and 2. I think they're just, they're so charming and they work on so many levels. Intellectually, they work for children, they work for adults, they work for fans, like these metter fans of films, but also if you don't know any of those quotes, it still works. Yeah. That's clever, isn't it? It's really, I think it's genuinely films for everybody apart from you. Apart from me? Yeah. This is good to know. So I as a grown man could go alone and feel okay. Please do. Right. Are you an animation venture? I love it. I'm a fan. I went to the studio Ghibli Museum and wept. Did you? Oh. Wept. I love animation. I find a lot of what I'm trying to do in comedy is be a human cartoon. You know, so like a lot of my influences are more animated than in the flesh. You're listening to the arts out from the BBC World Service with me, Nikki Baydie. The Norwegian writer Carl Uverkenalsgard is famous for his six book autobiographical cycle of novels, My Struggle, which became an international sensation. His latest novel, The School of Night, is the fourth in his The Morning Star series and can be read as a standalone story. It takes us to 1980s London where ambitious young photography student Christian has just arrived from rural Norway to seek fame and success. A search which blows the boundaries of art, ethics and maybe reality itself. The BBC's James Crawford asked Carl Uverkenalsgard why the strapline on the back of the book says, "Meet Christian Hardelland. You'll hate him." He is almost completely without empathy, so he treats people around him badly, doesn't care about other people really. But we're in his head, we see everything through his eyes and through his thoughts. So somehow both the writer and the reader is kind of close to him and kind of I hope he can also understand it or have a little sympathy with him. And did you always have this intention to begin with him looking backwards and lamenting his life? No. That was a later thing. Normally I never know what's going to happen in a novel. So I just started it in London 1986 with this young man wanting to be a photographer, going to an art school in London. And I had no idea who he was. And then somehow he went back to his family and there was something to him that he didn't connect to them, he didn't care about them. And then I realized, okay, this is the novel. Because if you're an artist and you don't have any empathy, you are completely free. I mean, you can do whatever you want. And that space is also the space of art, you know, it's all about transgression and getting outside of to normality. And that's kind of the figure he is and the man he is. There's a key moment early in the School of Night when Christian returns home to Norway for Christmas. And there's something quietly tragic here because again, it's a familiar, even universal story. The moment a young adult feels like they've outgrown their origins and their family. Yeah. He goes back to his parents. They have a farm in Norway. And he kind of comes back to his teenage past and doesn't feel comfortable there at all. He feels that he's more than this, you know. His parents are, you know, incredibly nice to him and helpful and warm. So this coldness inside of him is just in him. Well, yeah, there's a moment where everything shifts for Christian, isn't there? Where his photography up to this point, nothing special, becomes imbued with remarkable quality. And throughout your novel, we have references to the story of Fieist. This is a character originating in early 16th century German folk tales who said to have made a deal with the devil. And as the terms of the deal go, Faust will enjoy many years of material success and pleasure. But when the time is up, he has to give away his soul and spend eternity in hell. This is what's known. as a foasty impact, and it's an idea that's right to the heart of your novel, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And I think, you know, when great art happens, it's like a mystery. If you go into the surroundings, there's nothing there that can explain it, you know? It just, like, it comes out from nothing. There is something to this myth, I think, the sacrifice that you have to make to make something, which is not always seen, but I think there has to be some sort of that. And that's also kind of easy to relate to some other force, devilish force. Karl Uvacanalzkaad, with me in the art, so our studio, our Josh Sharp and Rihanna Dillan. Rihanna, well, first of all, I think we should say, Karl Uvacanalzkaad was your guest on the Penguin podcast. He was wonderful, actually. He's so thoughtful. It was just a fascinating conversation because he, in the book, the detail of it is so minute and intricate. And you could almost read it as being quite banal, but it never is. Oh, I so agree with you. Yeah. You haven't read the book yet, Josh. No, but I want to. Okay. So I'm one-sixteenth Norwegian, so I really think of it as a better one. It's cool. It's cool. For you. So for example, if it's a dinner scene, you will go through every motion that those people around the table are laying the table, that bringing this in, this is bubbling, wiping the lip of it. Yeah. I loved the fact that we are seeing this through the eyes of this hateful young man. Narcissist. Yeah, absolutely. A narcissist. And he's doing and saying all the things that you could never do or say as a sort of normal person who's not associated with your path. And yet, there is something kind of cathartic about him doing it. You know, he goes into a pub, the barman pulls his usual and he's like, well, how dare he assume that that's what I want this time? I'm going to order something completely different just to be an awful person. Yeah. Contrarian. Yeah. Josh, what did you think about Carl's idea that great art comes from nothing and involves the level of sacrifice that suggests this fausty impact? Yeah, I too made a deal with the devil and then became a sort of niche, alt comedian. No, I do think it's true. The part of like, sometimes great things have to surprise you and so you can't come in with an idea of what it is yet. You have to sort of let it lead you. So I like that aspect. And I certainly like him wanting to shine a light on bad people on misent ropes. Like Lydia Tarr is my favorite character of the past decade. From, you know what I mean? Blade by Cape Blanche. You know what I mean? I found myself like really rooting for her despite everything. Coming up in a moment, Oscar winning screenwriter Eric Roth on his first play. We'll hear from a Romanian filmmaker, Sepharde Farsi. And I'll be talking to my guest, the US Funny Man Josh Sharp, about his one-man comedy show Ta-da! He's here in the studio, along with Cultural Critic Rihanna Dylan. First then, the Oscar winning screenwriter, Eric Roth, famous for movies as varied as Forest Cump, The Insider, Killers of the Flower Moon, a star is born and dune has written his first play. It's based on one of the greatest westerns of all time, High Noon, the 1952 film starring Gary Cooper as a sheriff who learns on the day he's retiring that the murderer he sent for trial has been pardoned and is coming back for revenge. And the town's people are suddenly unwilling to support him. High Noon the play, currently running in London's western is directed by Theasharuk and stars the peerless Billy Crude Up as the sheriff. There are days and days between when summer turns to fall and men are no longer kings, when the dreams of youth become memories of days come by. When mountains he once dragged a clam crumble into the sea, when what he thought he might become becomes just fantasy. Eric Roth turned 80 last year and the BBC's Simeera Ahmed asked him whether writing this play was a birthday present to himself. It was in a way that's interesting. I just felt like you know I've done 60 years of movies and I said I got to try something else or I'm not really how I might call myself a writer you know. Well the film you know it's Nara Goddard's masterpiece. Could you give us a sense of when you first encountered the film? I grew up in Bedford Stuyves in Brooklyn and my grandfather who spoke Yiddish and Russian. We'd go three times a week to a movie and one of the movies we saw was High Noon and it made such an impression on me you know and I was always a movie not you know I was C-34 movies a week still do. What do you remember about the impact? I was aware because I was born a red diaper baby my father and mother were communist so they talked to me about the blacklist which is what I know Carl Foreman wrote the movie about. The McCarthy trial. The McCarthy trial. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly but more so I mean his was about courage about when somebody needs to stand up for something that's morally right. One of the challenges then of transposing a film like High Noon to the stage is of course the film features kind of big open vistas that sense of movement the railroad and you're dealing with a stage. Tell me a bit about how you're pro. Well I learned two things quite quickly one was when you write a movie you're writing close up you might be a close up of a hand might be close of face and eyeball you know whatever and then of course you have vistas where you can have some air but I wrote for a director he shuffles his feet and he said well that would be really nice if someone in the balcony said if he does a jig we might see him shuffle his feet and the other thing was that a movie script is three three and a half pages a scene 120 pages you got a two hour movie plays 12 15 minute scenes you know so you don't have many scenes all of a sudden you know a movie I think my killers of the film is 300 scenes or something you know so you don't have that so you have to be very very concise precise and hopefully articulate about expressing something yeah I mean the staging creates a sense of the town there's a great use of of the wooden walls which you close in or open out yes and then you also have a clock like a clock sitting there which is visible throughout because it plays out in real time like the like the film tell me about how you work to the director to get that stage that was really her I mean she's really pretty special the whole abstraction of it was something that I hadn't really quite imagined how to do it and she showed away what we could do without having some giant stage where of course you can't have horses now here or anything and so we were limited by what you can do this is musical but there are songs and you use songs spring scene there is even some line dancing where you have attempted to make it a musical no never tempted but I thought that would be in keeping with the material to have if the songs reflected on what the feelings were of the people and even though they're anachronistic so I think it makes it a little more modern a little more contemporary we do have some western songs too yeah and the dancing you mentioned were you gonna do something else yeah I wish if I had to do it again I would probably do a big barn dance or something yeah yeah because I think that would be fun because I noticed at the end of the play where they dance at the end for the curtain calls it it really is the audience loves it you know and they feel part of it and it's fun and if I had to do two things I'd add a little more humor and and I would have one more dancing Gary Cooper who was the star of as as Kane in the original film he brought his presence and one gets the sense of him saying very little giving very little way through dialogue Billy Crodd approaches it quite differently there's something very terrible about him he obviously does talk a lot more to make it well Bill I mean Billy didn't feel high bound to be Gary Cooper he is who he is but to me he's more available expresses when he's afraid or what he believes in I mean the interesting thing about that movie and the script is there is no backstory so you don't know where Gary Cooper came from why he's there except for being a marshal I understand but where was he before that and then Grace Kelly you don't know anything about her I mean why is she there where is she coming from and you never find out I'm fascinated by the range of subjects that you've taken on as screenplays and stories and I think you've said of some of your work that the source material sometimes not being that well written what's the art of transforming a story like that well the truth is bad books make better movies and bad plays make great movies why I don't know they probably have just some kind of foundation then you're allowed you have freedom to then make it as you will Eric Roth and I am excited to see High Noon the play also stars the Irish actor Denise Goth who is one of the most talented stage and screen actors of her generation my guess this week are comedian actor director Shoman Josh Sharp and our cultural critic is Rihanna Dylan Rihanna there are plenty of plays and books that have been made into films how unusual is it for a classic film not a musical to appear as a stage play I mean it is fairly unusual I saw fatal attraction on stage yes I have to say it was one of the worst pieces of theatre that I've ever seen in my life okay it was it was just really interesting because why was that why did the film work so well why did the play not because it's it is a very melodramatic is it for us you had a score behind it you had close up some faces potentially yeah maybe it is actually a small store than we think, because although we know the story is very broad and there is some massive things that happen, very iconic scenes, funny boiling, etc. And yeah, actually, I think the subtleties and the nuance of this noir-ish film works much better on screen than it does on stage. Josh, is there a classic film that you'd like to see on stage? Well, now that we're on it, Tar. Yes. Actually, Tar's probably a musical, isn't it? I think it could. I imagine. I think it works so well. Actually, it's a sort of blind. Because it's so dark. Focused and dark in intent. And character driven. I believe in the spring they're doing dog day after noon on Broadway, too. So this is a moment for films being made into plays. Ah, interesting. That one makes sense to me, though, because so much of it is this one-room standoff, feels very David Mamma. You know? Is there a classic film you'd like to see on stage, then, Rihanna? I am a lot less forgiving, I think, of theatre. So I think, actually, I would rather. I. stay in your lane. If you're a movie, stay on screen, if you're brilliant theatre, performance, don't get made into a movie, just stay there. What about theatre makes you less forgiving, would you say? I think it's like the immediacy of it. So I have to react very much in the moment. I feel like I'm kind of put on the spot if something is awful. I feel it's so much more deeply than if I'm in theatre. I'm trying to make a movie theatre. It's weird, because I find I have the opposite sometimes, because when I'm watching a film, I'm like, you chose this. If it doesn't work for me, I'm like, you. Or it's theatre, because it's eight times a week. Sometimes if it's not working, I'm like, well, you might just be feeling a little off today. I have such empathy for them where I'm like, it's hard treading the boards. But that's not what I'm talking about. But that's also because you are a performer, so you would be really empathic. You're listening to The Arts Air from the BBC World Service. Let's turn the spotlight onto our guest here in the studio, Josh Sharp. Josh is an actor, writer and comedian who, after graduating college, began performing with the renowned improvisational and sketch comedy group, The Upright Citizens Brigade, in New York. He's worked on TV shows like The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, The Eliza Slesinger's get-show, Two Dope Queens, and this week at The Comedy Seller. Along with his creative collaborator, Aaron Jackson, he wrote and starred in a 2016 musical about identical twins, which ran for a year in New York before being optioned as a film. That film was released in movie theaters across the world in 2023. Josh's co-stars included Boen Yang and Megan Malali. Last year, Josh premiered his One Man Comedy Show Ta-da in New York, which is now running at the Soho Theatre in London. It's built around a rapid far sequence of 2,000 PowerPoint slides, which Josh has memorized and performs to. Ta-da explores themes of identity, mortality, drawing on stories from his life. Here's a clip from The Stage Show. That's right, I was a boyhood magician. See his evidence this. Yeah, I was so obsessed with magic as a little boy that my parents said I should just come in the room all the time and go, Ta-da! So, you know. But first trick I've learned was a classic. The old pick a card in e-card. But then I would just guess the card. I did not know the trick. I would just keep guessing until I got it right. I'd be like, is this your card? No. Is this your card? No, until I randomly got it. It wasn't magic. It was a child's brute force of will. Josh, this is in no way a traditional stand-up show. So how would you describe it? It's funny. I think in some ways it started as that. You know, it's jokes, but there's narrative. The first act is a lot of stuff about my gay experience, some of which is rather crass. And then it's like this story of how my mom, like in the last year of her life when she was about to die of a variant cancer, sort of decided to like gently bully me out of the closet. And then it's this story of like a near death experience. So I think if I was just saying that in a microphone, you'd be like, oh yes, this is that sort of like storyteller narratively rooted fringe-esque comedy show. But as much as I love stand-up, there's a part of it that can feel lazy, especially when you're paying a theater price. So I was like, what can I do to sort of show you that it's not just me standing here? Some of these comics don't even move. So I put it inside of this 2000 slide PowerPoint that's like tightly tethered to the words I'm saying. And I have memorized all these cues. So then it sort of feels like it's this tight-rope act. And honestly, that every moment of the show, you're seeing like, wow, he worked really hard for this. Oh yeah, I mean, it's something I should talk about with my therapist more than you that in the same way. It may be because it is such a feat. You really can't, Mr. Beat, or you can deliberately, Mr. Beat. How long did it take you to memorize all those words? A few years, because I would do it in chunks. I ultimately, and this is a crazy thing to say, treated it like it was music. I learned the rhythm of it. Right. So it's become sort of a dance piece where I'm just like, I know the rhythms of when to click. And then there's sort of like two things happening in my head at the same time. I'm like, doing stand-up, and then there's like a little dance piece I'm doing with my thumb and forefinger. Or like a musical click track. Exactly. I have a rhythm in my head that I'm clicking through while I'm saying jokes. Back to your therapist, you do say in the show, this may be a thing that you designed to torture yourself. So was it? I think sometimes, because again, this feels like such a silly career to have, that sometimes I think I'm trying to be like, if I'm lucky enough to do this, I should really be working hard. You know, I think I feel this onus to be like, how can I show you like, I work hard too. You want to you nurses who've come to see me? How can I show you I put effort? We learn in the show that you were a boyhood magician and spoiler, he can still do magic tricks. Tell us what it was and what it is about magic that really appeals to you. Looking back, I do think it's like the perfect hobby for a closeted teenager, because so much of being a magician, it's presented as very hetero. It's like, you have this beautiful female assistant, but really, it's like you saw her in half and then the man wears the sparkles. You know what I'm saying? I do think it was like, oh yeah, he's doing magic, of course. We learn in the show about you're coming out and we understand some of the traits that American parents from the South have. Would you, for the benefit of people listening in different parts of the world, give us a couple of examples of Southern traits? I grew up in like a very rural part of town and like all my family were like farming people. So it just like, wasn't very cosmopolitan. And I had like no references at that point for gay people. But then I would say, especially the South, which I love in many ways, you'll find that there's an affect that's very like, jins heel and accommodating when sometimes it's masking. Like to say, oh, bless her heart. It's actually one of the most like savage, awful things you could say. You know, like a lot of things sound very kind, but in fact, it's like, wow. So the humour and the sex anecdotes make way out of particular point in the story. To your mother's cancer story and the drug trial, don't want to spoil this because people will see the show. How did you approach telling her story when you knew it was going to be witnessed by an audience? Well, there were sort of two things. One was, I really liked the idea of telling the story of my mom who like passed away from cancer, but trying to sort of tell it in a way that embraces everything that was sort of warm and lovely about this last year we had together and isn't just about like, this is so sad, which like of course it is. And the same with it being a coming out story, which sort of every, you know, queer story teller is like legally obligated to tell. I was like, how do I tell it where it's like not exactly from the place of trauma. It's more from the place of like, what a weird gift my dying mother gave me to do this. And then sort of holistically, it came as soon as I was doing the show where it's like, I'm saying one thing and you're reading another. We became very like thematically into the idea that you're always taking in two things at once. So like, how can we embrace that in the storytelling? You also try to explain quantum immortality theory giving us this Schrodinger's cat example because you're weaving into your mom and her extra time. And weaving is something you do so well in the show. How do you come up with the ways to do it? I've always liked stand up that feels like there's some like narrative thrust that I don't know is the Christmas tree, but then you're sort of like dressing it with all these ornaments that are just tangents. And then I think it's like, I sort of know where I'm heading so I can deviate as far as I wanted any moment because I know I'm going to be back there. And that I like that the audience often is going like, where is he going with this? And then when it lands, you go, oh, oh no. Well, the standout line of the show for me for the emotional heartbeat was about having difficult conversations with the people that you love. Yeah, I guess so much of it was that when my mom who thought she was going to die and then sort of had this miraculous drug trial experience and got an extra year, she became a person who was like, we're going to have the conversations we've been afraid to have. And one of them was just her without really like making me do it, setting forth so many paths to be like, listen, gay guy, I need you to tell it to me. So I do think it was that it was like, and again, she managed to, this is the good part of the Southern thing where she managed to do it in a very warm, loving, genteel way. She didn't really confront me over it. She just kept sort of presenting me with opportunities to be like, I remember when a friend came out of the closet, she said to me and this is a direct quote, she went, being gay, I feel like that's something people are doing more of now. (laughing) It was a lot of that where it's like, I'm not exactly saying what I mean, but I'm really giving you an opening to say what you are. - What was the, sorry, go on the line that sort of moment that allowed you to come out to her? - Well, really she, when she heard about how a friend's parents had responded rather negatively, she just sort of really went in and was like, I couldn't do that. Can't imagine not knowing something about my son. Josh Sharp, thank you so very much. - You're with the art sour and I'm Nikki Bady. The Paris-based Iranian filmmaker, Sepedé Farsi, has worked across many cinema disciplines. She's made documentaries, dramas, and an animated feature. Her 2009 film, Tehran Without Permission, was shot using just a camera phone, capturing the mood of Sepedé's home city, in the lead up to the pro-democracy demonstrations of the Green Movement or Persian Spring. Her latest film, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, is a documentary featuring video call conversations between the filmmaker and the late Palestinian photojournalist, Father Mahasuna. The BBC's Melanie Jones, asked Sepedé how her interest in film began. - I was 16. I was very interested in taking photos. I took my father's camera and started just like, buying roles of films and making photos and developing, and all, but I didn't have any training. I managed to find a course, which was initially supposed to be more on photography, but turned out to be actually more on film and cinema analysis and history. And that's where I really discovered cinema in such an intense way, despite the fact that we did not have access to films. And our professor draws the shots of classics of the world cinema to us, films that we cannot see, and he describes them to us. He reads parts of the scripts, he draws the shots, he makes analysis, and I was like, really, a door opened to me and it was like a new world. - It must have been incredible when you actually got to see some of these films for the first time. When did that happen? - That happened in Paris when I arrived in Paris in '84. What happened is that I was at the age of 16, right after that course. I was also a kind of an activist, as much as you can be at that age in high school. And I had been helping out and hiding a young girl from the same high school who was pursued by the, or looked after by the regime. And somebody gave my house's address on the torture. The house was raided, she was found, and because of having hidden her, I was arrested as well as my mom, and I spent eight months in jail. She was tortured, the girl was tortured and killed. And when I was released, I had no rights. Basically I couldn't go back to high school. Later on, I've finished the high school by myself. I still was not allowed to go to the university, although I did have the scientific qualifications. So basically I was left with no choices. I couldn't do anything. As soon as I got a chance to get a passport, which was given to me by accident or by mistake, because they were not supposed to give it to me, I just left. And then I landed in Paris and I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna learn French." And I would stay here in Paris. So I started mathematics and I became a math teacher. And then mid late '90s, I decided to start making films. So I made a couple of short films first, and then I made my first documentary, and I just gave up everything else. And I focused on filmmaking from then onwards. Let's talk about your 2009 film to ran without permission. How would you describe that film to someone who'd never seen it or heard of it? Well, it's an attempt to show my birth town, Tehran, which I love, and I cannot go back to anymore for now, to people who don't know that city. And I think if you watch it today, because we're talking about a film that was shot in 2008 and 2009, it's, I think, it's still very much to the point, in terms of the energy that you feel in Tehran, all the craziness, all the contradictions, the paradoxes of the city, you can still feel it. And the fact that I did it, I made it with a mobile. It gives it this touch of the underground kind of cinema, which I think one of, if not the first, filmmaker to use in this way, to make a full feature film with a mobile, to make it totally underground, to make it by myself alone. And the fact that it was just the year that preceded the uprisings of the Green Movement, the Green Wave, you really feel it. You also feel that change, the political turn in the film. It's still very much there, that energy. One of the things that has happened, and I think it's really worth mentioning, is the prominence of the documentary filmmaking and of women documentary filmmakers, which I consider as being a new wave in the Iranian cinema. Really interesting, because I think as a genre, given the restrictions, it's interesting to see how women, especially, get about it and find ways of making films, which would be impossible, practically, as fiction. The combination between the restrictions that Iranian filmmakers generally go through and being a woman on top of that in Iran, gives them an even greater ability to address things differently, and hence, gets films that are very interesting and very human. Sephidae Farsi, still with me in the Arts High Studio, are Rihanna Dillan and Josh Sharp. Rihanna, shooting films on smartphones. It's democratised filmmaking, it's a lot more citizen journalism, anyone can record anything that they're witnessing, publish it immediately. And we can now see films and stories from places that were previously impossible. Women making documentaries in Iran, Sephidae Mentioned. What are your thoughts on that Rihanna? I mean, of course, it's incredible, it's so exciting, and I think we're so used to watching everything through our phones that we don't need that extra sort of layer of cinematic lens, I don't know, it doesn't need to be an HD, it doesn't need to be in 4K, we're kind of used to things being a little bit more shonky, because we've sort of grown up with that and seeing this very hand-held kind of movie making. I think it gives us such an intimacy, though, because we aren't imagining these camera people standing around with massive cameras, we, for example, for Samar. For Samar, it's a Syrian film by director Wad Al-Katipe, who basically made this film in Syria while they were sort of under siege, and she was pregnant and it was for her unborn daughter who then we see born, and it is gorgeous, devastating, I mean, it affected me so deeply for a very long time. So Josh, what about you? Is there a standout documentary for you? I've ever seen an American movie that's like 25 years old, it's wonderful, it's just about this man who lives in his parents' basement in the Midwest, and he really wants to make a horror movie, and it's just about that. It's about him trying to get a movie made, and in a way, it just like becomes one of those stories that's just like about movie making and also why people want to be alive, but also, I think my real answer is stop making sense, or we allow to count concerts. Oh, yes, of course you are, David Bern, amazing. But I need to watch this one, I don't feel up on some of the more recent dots. It's on Netflix. We'll watch it together. Yes, do you do popcorn when you watch a movie? Anything for you. Oh, my new best friend. That's it for this week's art, so a thank you for your ears, and thank you to both my guests. Josh Sharp and Rianna Dillan, and if you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to the Artsour podcast, wherever you get yours. For now, from me, Nikki Baby, studio managers, Sarah Hockley and Never Masirian, and producers Nikki Paxman and Kieran Birmingham. See you next week. (upbeat music)