Andrew Spielman

DATE June 7, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Andrew Spielman talks about his book, "Mosquito: A
Natural History of Our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Mosquito bites can be a nuisance, but in some parts of the world mosquito
bites can kill you after infecting you with encephalitis, yellow fever or
dengue. Public health officials in the US are tracking the spread of the
mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which started showing up in New York City in
1999. So far, close to 90 people in the US have been infected with the virus,
nearly 10 have died. My guest, Andrew Solomon, has been--my guest Andrew
Spielman has been studying mosquitoes for about 50 years. He's a senior
investigator of tropical diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health and
he's the author of the new book "Mosquito."

Before we get to West Nile virus, let's hear how and why the mosquito sucks
your blood. Only the female mosquito feeds on blood. She needs it to make
eggs. In fact, each meal will help her to make two to 300 eggs. A mosquito
may probe your skin as many as 20 times before biting. I asked what she's
looking for.

Professor ANDREW SPIELMAN (Mosquito Expert): Well, she's like a blind nurse.
What she's looking for is a vein, of course and she can't see it. So she's
essentially stabbing at random. And after about 20 random stabs, if she fails
to actually find a blood meal, then she, of course, gives up and tries
someplace else. But the whole process is extremely interesting. These random
inward stabs are aimed at nicking a blood vessel and forming a pool of blood
in the skin. A mosquito has sensors on the end of her mouthparts and if a
pool of blood forms she can taste it as she pulls back at the end of each of
those 15 to 20 insertion of her mouthparts. And once the mouthparts taste
blood, she ceases this in-and-out movement and starts drinking. The result of
that is to impale the blood vessel over the ends of her mouthparts.

GROSS: Now each time that she's stabbing looking of a vessel, is that another
bite or do you only get a bite when she actually finds the vessel and sucks
your blood.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, the bite is when she lands and inserts her mouthparts.
That starts the biting process. And then in the course of searching for
blood, there are some 15 to 20 surges of her mouthparts through the skin. Oh,
it all takes about a minute or a minute and a half, these 15 or 20 surges.
And each bite includes all of this activity.

GROSS: So now what you point out is after a mosquito has bitten you, she
probably has ingested several times her body weight in your blood.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Yes.

GROSS: And that's going to make it difficult for her to fly, which means
what? That you can kill her more easily?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, this makes a very vulnerable point in the life cycle
of a mosquito. That hour after she's taken a meal of blood, until her body is
able to rid itself of most of the water that she ingested, she'll sit on
nearby wall or on a nearby vertical surface and urinate for about an hour.
And only then is she light enough to move around very easily.

GROSS: Huh. I never thought that they were urinating on the wall. Is that
detectable?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Oh, yeah. If you look carefully, you can see the
pink-tinged urine that the female is excreting. Absolutely.

GROSS: So she's excreting the fluid from your blood, basically.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Mm-hmm. And there's often a little bit of blood mixed in with
that.

GROSS: M-hmm. Now what is she doing? What is she putting into your skin
that's going to make you itch and swell?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, there is a series of enzymes that she secretes into
the skin. Each inward movement of her mouthparts results in a secretion of
this salivary fluid that contains a series of enzymes. One them is apyrase,
that stops platelets from aggregating. And that helps the flow of blood if
indeed she's fortunate enough to have nicked a blood vessel on that inward
plunge.

GROSS: So it's like she's putting in an anti-clotting device into your blood.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Right. And the enzymes and other material that she ingests
with each inward surge is--these are antigenic and that's what causes the
immune reaction in a person's skin, the sensitivity reaction that results in
itching and a small amount of pain.

GROSS: What does antigenic mean?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, it's a chemical that is foreign in a person's skin.
So this would be a mosquito chemical that would be in a person's skin that
would not actually be recognized as something that ought to be there. So a
person's immune reaction would react against this foreign substance, this
material that is called an antigen.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Andrew Spielman. He's an
entomologist who's a senior investigator in tropical diseases at Harvard
School of Public Health. He's also the author of the new book "Mosquito."

People on the East Coast now are particularly worried about West Nile virus,
which was first found in parts of the East Coast in 1999. You say West Nile
virus is the kind of mosquito-borne virus that is more likely to breed in
urban places. Why is that?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, the mosquito that is the main vector of West Nile
virus, that is it's the main carrier of it--between vertebrate hosts, is an
urban mosquito. It's called the house mosquito and it's only found in
abundance in really urban areas. It breeds only in filthy water of the sort
that occurs in a street drain or an abandoned swimming pool or the downspout
of a roof gutter that's not draining well. It's that sort of an extremely
artificial, extremely urban sort of a site that breeds these mosquitoes. And
these mosquitoes, of course, are essential for the transmission of this
particular virus.

GROSS: So I guess if you've got stagnant water that fits that description
near your house, you'd be doing the right thing to get rid of it.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Oh, yeah. Indeed, you would.

GROSS: Where has West Nile virus been spotted so far this year?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, the first isolations this year were in New Jersey and
at last reading of my e-mail system, there were 11 isolates from New Jersey,
one isolate as far south a Maryland and several others in southern New England
and New York.

GROSS: An isolate means?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, in this case it means a dead bird with a virus in it
that we could isolate and actually demonstrate was a virus of a certain sort.
So it's a technical term used in that way. It would also be used for
designating a pool of mosquitoes that contained virus.

GROSS: But what are the symptoms of West Nile virus?

Prof. SPIELMAN: There's a fever initially and extreme muscle weakness. And
there may be respiratory difficulty. There's a headache and it's that sort of
a thing. The most characteristic sign of infection is this extreme muscle
weakness.

GROSS: So it's like an extreme version of the flu?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, much more than that in that one loses control over his
muscles and is unable to move effectively.

GROSS: Oh, that is worse. So what precautions would you advise people to
take?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, if there is any obvious source of these mosquitoes
around the house, they very definitely ought to be eliminated, which means an
abandoned hot tub, an abandoned bird bath, a downspout that is not draining
well, other pools of water around the house--larger pools of water, not just a
water bottle or something. It would always be something that would hold at
least a gallon of water. That ought to be eliminated if it's seen.
Automobile tires--abandoned automobile tires that are lying around under a
tree are also sources of danger in this regard. So in terms of individual
personal protection, one ought to avoid mosquito bites at night. And air
conditioning is a wonderful way of doing that. The windows will be closed and
mosquitoes will be unlikely to enter a house if its air conditioned.

Otherwise, screens are reasonably effective, although these mosquitoes are
notorious for working their way into small openings in the screens. They can
often jam themselves through the holes in a fairly course screen. So it's a
matter of looking out, especially at night, that you're not being exposed to
the bites of these mosquitoes. In general though, one ought to avoid all
mosquito bites. Most mosquitoes feed in the late afternoon and early morning.
Those are not the main vectors of this virus, but there is a certain chance
that the virus may be in these other mosquitoes. And I would recommend that
one would avoid any unnecessary mosquito bites. The use of DEET, a repellent
with DEET in it--that's spelled D-E-E-T, all capital letters--is an excellent
way of protecting oneself from mosquitoes. Long pants and a shirt with long
sleeves would also be helpful.

GROSS: So I don't want to unnecessarily scare people, do you expect that a
lot of people will get West Nile virus this year? Or do you expect, even if
it spreads further, that there will be still very few people who actually are
sickened by it?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, I think that the virus will surely spread
geographically. But the issue of intensity of transmission in any site is a
complete unknown. We have no idea whether transmission will be intense
anywhere. It may act, as it does in Europe, just sort of waxing and waning
and appearing now and then, affecting, sickening 100 people or more and then
disappearing for years in terms of human illness. Of course, the virus is
still there in nature, but it's not causing this sort of damage that we
sometimes see.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Andrew Spielman, and he is with
the Harvard School of Public Health where he's a senior investigator in
tropical diseases. He's an entomologist and author of the new book called
"Mosquito."

Let's take a short break here and then we'll hear more news about the
mosquito. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest, Andrew Spielman is author of the new book "Mosquito."

What is the worst mosquito infestation you've seen during your mosquito
investigations around the world?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, I've been in houses in Africa where you could rub your
hand across the wall of a bedroom and it was like a cloud of mosquitoes would
emerge from under your hand, absolutely dense layer of mosquitoes over the
wall, all filled with blood.

It's interesting that in China the graves of Confucius and his heirs are
vulnerable to mosquito infestations because they're stone-lined. The actual
grave is not filled with earth. There's a stone tablet over the graves,
thousands of them, and many of them fill up with water. I was there on one
occasion and was amazed at the absolute cloud of mosquitoes that faced me
while in that particular site.

GROSS: At that site in Africa where the wall was just covered with
mosquitoes, what did you do there to help get rid of the mosquitoes?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, this was Egypt, in the Nile delta. Nothing very much.
Those were the common house mosquitoes, and they were an intractable problem
under those conditions. I did nothing.

GROSS: So people just lived that way.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Yes.

GROSS: And were these mosquitoes likely to carry illness?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Yes, indeed.

GROSS: So why was there nothing that you could do in this particular area of
Egypt that you were discussing?

Prof. SPIELMAN: This was the area that was effected by the Aswan Dam that
went in in upper Egypt. This, of course, is in lower Egypt. But what
happened there was that it stabilized the water table and people were building
their homes right at the water's edge. Prior to Aswan Dam, there was an
annual cycle of flooding which meant that you couldn't build your house in a
poorly drained location. But Aswan went in, the land would be usable for
construction that was less and less well drained, and there was just water
everywhere. And there was...

GROSS: So I guess you can't expect to live in a place like that and escape.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Right. That is the burden that you pay for building a house
in a location like that.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

My guest is Andrew Spielman. He's an entomologist who's written a new book
called "Mosquito." He's a senior investigator in tropical diseases with the
Harvard School of Public Health.

You know how sometimes two people will be sleeping in the same room and one of
them is bitten like crazy by mosquitoes and the other doesn't get a bite. Are
some people more flavorful or attractive to mosquitoes than others?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Oh, very much so. Many experiments have been done along
these lines. People have attempted to understand what it is about certain
people that makes them more attractive to mosquitoes than other people. And
we don't really know. Some investigators in Holland working with certain
mosquitoes, that is those mosquitoes of Africa that feed almost exclusively on
people, and these investigators learned that it was the odor of human feet
that was acting as the stimulus for mosquitoes biting. Being Dutch, they also
tried Limburger cheese and found that it was equally attractive.

GROSS: Well, here's some bad news. You say that typically if there's a
mosquito around what you're going to do is wave your arms to try to wave the
mosquito away.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Oh, yes.

GROSS: But what does that do?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Motion registers on their little nervous systems and alerts
them that an interesting object is nearby. So I wouldn't wave my arms. I
wouldn't swat at mosquitoes unless you're absolutely certain that that was the
only mosquito in the vicinity.

GROSS: Otherwise you're saying, `Over here! I'm over here!'

Prof. SPIELMAN: Right.

GROSS: Well, I've got one last question for you. Say you're in bed at home
or in a hotel and you hear a mosquito buzzing around, what are you going to
do?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, I would kill it, even though I'd be absolutely sure
that the risk was so infinitesimally small. I find myself waking up in the
middle of the night with a note of high C in my ears and making a fool out of
myself chasing that mosquito, calling myself an idiot all the while. But that
is what I would do. I would chase it down and kill it for emotional reasons.

GROSS: Because they're your adversary?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Well, in this case, yeah.

GROSS: Now is it...

Prof. SPIELMAN: It's the unknown. Yeah, it's the unknown. You always
wonder if that bite is loaded, I guess.

GROSS: Is it always high C that a mosquito buzzes at?

Prof. SPIELMAN: In that neighborhood. Different species have different
frequencies and different overtones, but that's generally the range of the
sound that they make.

GROSS: And are you good enough that you can tell by the buzz what kind of
mosquito is hovering around you?

Prof. SPIELMAN: Yeah, a little. I can tell a common house mosquito from the
yellow fever mosquito and from a (technical difficulties) mosquitoes. Yeah.
Yeah, I can do that.

GROSS: One more thing before you go. I am more alarmed having just spoken
with you than I was before.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Oh my.

GROSS: Do you want to leave me in that state or do you want to reassure me?

Prof. SPIELMAN: No. No, no, not at all. I think that individual risk is
very, very small. We shouldn't overrate the importance of this as a threat to
our individual health. What is important is the numbers not the rate. So
there may be 20 or 30 people affected in a city of 10 million, but the risk to
the individual is extremely small.

GROSS: Well, thank you so much for talking with us about mosquitoes. It's
been fascinating. Thank you.

Prof. SPIELMAN: Thank you.

GROSS: Andrew Spielman is the author of the new book "Mosquito." He's a
senior investigator of tropical disease at the Harvard School of Public
Health.

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: Coming up, actor Jonathan Pryce. He's now starring in the London
production of "My Fair Lady" and he plays Gustav Mahler in the new film "Bride
of the Wind." He co-starred in the films "Tomorrow Never Dies," "Glenngarry
Glen Ross" and "Brazil," and won a Tony for his performance in "Miss Saigon."

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Actor Jonathan Pryce talks about his life and career
in the theater and movies
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

There are several ways you may know my guest, Jonathan Pryce. If you like
Bond films, you'll recognize him as the villain in "Tomorrow Never Dies." If
you like Mamet, you'll know Pryce as a gullible customer in the film
adaptation of "Glengarry Glen Ross." Pryce won a Tony for his portrayal as a
repellent pimp in "Miss Saigon." He starred in the cable movie "Barbarians at
the Gate." But TV viewers may know him best for his Infiniti car
commercials. Pryce's other films include "Brazil," "Carrington," and
"Evita."

Now Pryce is starring in a revival of "My Fair Lady" in London's West End and
he plays composer and conductor Gustav Mahler in the new film "Bride of the
Wind." The film revolves around musician Alma Mahler and her tumultuous
relationship with Gustav and several other brilliant men, including the
architect Walter Gropius and the novelist Franz Werfel. I asked Jonathan
Pryce what he needed to know about Gustav Mahler before portraying him.

Mr. JONATHAN PRYCE (Actor): What I found when I played kind of biographical
roles in the past is that there's a danger of having too much knowledge
and--because, ultimately, all you have is the script. And that's all the
audience are going to receive. But there's a lot to read about Mahler and a
lot to find out about him. And he was a hugely complex character, but,
sadly--not for the film, but sadly for me, it's just one episode in the film.
The film is, essentially, about Alma Mahler and her life and lives with the
various men in her life. And Mahler takes up the first part of the film. I
would loved to have gone on. I'd love the film to be called "Gustav" or
something; "The Bridegroom of the Wind" and gone on to explore, in depth, you
know, much more about Mahler, I mean, because there is so many things that are
just hinted at and dismissed in a sentence or so. You get the information
over and then you move on. And it's--essentially, it's about his emotional
life with Alma. There's another film there that I'd like to make.

GROSS: You have a love scene with Sarah Wynter, who plays Alma Mahler. This
is before she's married to Mahler. But I think this love scene is a good
example of how something in movie love scenes has shifted. Now you're both
under the blankets in this, so we don't get to see your bodies, but we can see
by your movements that you're actually having--or, I mean, the characters are
having sexual intercourse.

Mr. PRYCE: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: You could just tell that from the motions. What do you think of
having to do that in love scenes now? I've seen this a lot in movies now.
You know what I mean; that kind of like up and down motion. You can tell
what's supposed to be happening.

Mr. PRYCE: Oh, that thing.

GROSS: Yes.

Mr. PRYCE: The up and down thing.

GROSS: The up and down thing, yes.

Mr. PRYCE: Well, it was--it's very integral to the scene and very important.
It's--I don't know how to talk about it other than saying the scene is written
in a way that Mahler--the first part of the lovemaking scene he's incapable
of--or is shown to have been incapable of making love to her. And it tells
you something about his character and his personality. And then in the second
half of the scene, when Alma takes control and they're able to make love and
that's really what it's about. It's about being able to--the second part of
the scene's about being able to fulfill it.

I think the way we did it was rather tasteful and rather romantic and, you
know, unless you're going to cut away to the old scene of the crashing waves
on the beach or the train...

GROSS: Training going through the tunnel. Right.

Mr. PRYCE: ...going into the tunnel, I don't know what you do. Yeah. No,
I'm all for it.

GROSS: OK. Jonathan Pryce is my guest and he's now starring in "My Fair
Lady" in London and he's also starring in the new movie "Bride of the Wind"
about Alma Mahler. He plays Gustav Mahler.

You're break through a musical, which was also the musical that a lot of
people in the States were introduced to you through was "Miss Saigon"...

Mr. PRYCE: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ..in which you played a pimp selling girls on the street. And you
played the role in London, then took the role to the States. When you took
the role to the States, there was a big controversy because Asian-American
actors protested that an Asian-American should have the role because it's a
Vietnamese role--half Vietnamese, half French. And Actors Equity agreed, so
there was, you know, a protest against you getting the role. You almost
weren't allowed to play it. I wondering if you ever wanted to give up. I
mean, you know, let's face it. There's so few roles for Asian-American actors
and particularly, when "Miss Saigon" came out, color-blind casting hadn't
progressed to even the point that it is today.

Mr. PRYCE: Well, I think the issue of "Miss Saigon" promoted and helped the
issue of color-blind casting. It was--I mean, it works both ways in every
way. You can't--you know, if you demand that people of any role should--of
any ethnic background should be able to play any role, then that covers, you
know, black, white, whatever. And it--I mean, there were--very positive
things came out of those arguments. And one was that people were made aware
that there was a problem and that minority actors weren't being seen for the
roles they should be seen and that very positive things came out of the "Miss
Saigon" issue.

GROSS: Did it make you more sensitive to color-blind casting?

Mr. PRYCE: I'd always been sensitive to color-blind casting. I'd worked in
multiracial companies in Liverpool, Nottingham, and Stratford, so it wasn't a
problem for me. The company in London, the "Miss Saigon" company, was a
multiracial cast. There were people of all nationalities playing all kinds of
roles. It wasn't a Caucasian cast, you know. It was--if there was a
frustration, it was--at the time, it was that our case wasn't being understood
or represented properly and so I never really felt a lot of frustration of it
because I knew the validity of our case, really.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear a song from the cast recording of "Miss
Saigon." And this is you singing your role as a pimp. The song is called
"What a Waste" and you're selling girls in this song. Let's hear it.

(Soundbite of "What a Waste")

Mr. PRYCE: (Singing) What a waste to pay for my keep and rounding up sheep
to fleece here in Bangkok. I'm disgraced. I can't get ahead 'cause nothing
is dead as peace here in Bangkok. Come on guy. Check my girls, huh? Ten
cents an hour and I stand all day. You like what you see, huh, yeah? I could
sell Kim for 10 times my pay. ...(Unintelligible). If you're looking for
fun, original sin, if you want to put out, then you've got to come in.

Unidentified Women: (Singing) Girls. I've got girls, gorgeous girls; very
nice. Girls.

Mr. PRYCE: (Singing) Gee, isn't Bangkok really neat?

Unidentified Women: (Singing) I got girls.

Mr. PRYCE: (Singing) The things they're selling on the street.

Unidentified Women: (Singing) Girls...

Mr. PRYCE: (Singing) Fresh dog, if that's what you'd enjoy.

Unidentified Women: (Singing) ...worth a price.

Mr. PRYCE: (Singing) A girl, but if you want a boy...

Unidentified Women: (Singing) ...don't come to me.

Mr. PRYCE: (Singing) Hey, get out of here, will ya?

Unidentified Women: (Singing) Last drink is free.

Mr. PRYCE: (Singing) Don't be a lump. You can hump for a small, extra fee.

GROSS: Jonathan Pryce, words like `slimy' and `repellant' were used to
describe your character in this musical. It must have been an interesting
character to play.

Mr. PRYCE: It was, yes. Yeah, as I'd never done anything like this before
and a completely sung-through role was very exciting and challenging to do.

GROSS: Let me contrast your role of the aggressive pimp to a role that you
played in David Mamet's film adaptation of his play "Glengarry Glen Ross."
And this is a play about salesmen who are sharks. They're very smarmy, fast
talkers. They sell real estate; real estate that probably isn't worth a dime,
but they're selling it for a lot of money to people who aren't smart enough to
kind of pick up on the scam. And you're one of those unsuspecting people.
You've bought some land from Al Pacino. But in this scene you've come in to
say that you've spoken to your wife and she insists that you back out of the
deal. Of course, Al Pacino has no intention of letting you back out of the
deal, so here's Pacino trying to get away from you.

(Soundbite from "Glengarry Glen Ross")

Mr. AL PACINO: I'll call you this evening. Jim, I'm sorry you had to come
all the way in. I'm sorry. Monday, lunch.

Unidentified Actor: We really have to go.

Mr. PACINO: All right. Monday.

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): She called the cons--the attorney. I don't know. The
attorney general. They said we have three days.

Mr. PACINO: Who'd she call?

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): The attorney g--it was some consumer office.

Mr. PACINO: Why'd she do that, Jim?

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): I don't know. I don't know. But they said we have
three days. They said we've got three days.

Mr. PACINO: Three days.

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): Three, you know.

Mr. PACINO: No, I don't know. Tell me.

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): Well, to change our minds.

Mr. PACINO: Of course, you have three days.

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): So we can't talk Monday.

Mr. PACINO: Monday. You saw my book. Jim, Jim, I can't. You saw my book.
I can't.

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): Yeah, but we have to before Monday to get our money
back.

Mr. PACINO: Three business days, they mean. Three business days.

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): Yeah, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Mr. PACINO: I don't understand.

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): That's what they are. They're three bus--if we wait
till Monday, my time limit runs out.

Mr. PACINO: You don't count Saturday?

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): I'm not.

Mr. PACINO: I'm saying, you don't include Saturday in the three days. It's
not a business day.

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): I am not counting it. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, so
it would have elapsed.

Mr. PACINO: What would have elapsed?

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): If we wait till Monday, it would have elapsed.

Mr. PACINO: When did you write the check?

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): Yesterday.

Mr. PACINO: What was yesterday?

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): Tuesday.

Mr. PACINO: And when was that check cashed?

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): I don't know.

Mr. PACINO: Well, what was the earliest that it could have been cashed?

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): I don't know.

Mr. PACINO: Today. Today, which, in any case, it was not, as there was
something on the agreement I wanted to go over with you, in any case.

Mr. PRYCE (As Jim): It wasn't cashed, then?

Mr. PACINO: I just phoned downtown. It's on their desk.

GROSS: That's Jonathan Pryce and Al Pacino in a scene from David Mamet's
"Glengarry Glen Ross."

Jonathan Pryce, what's it like to be the person who is so afraid and
unassertive that he can barely speak in a movie that's just populated with
fast talkers?

Mr. PRYCE: It--well, it's quite a relief, really. I--the irony is I filmed
that during the day while I was doing "Miss Saigon."

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. PRYCE: So at night I was playing the sleazy pimp and the--the
fast-talking hustler and during the day being the--just about what I had
enough energy to do; be the wimp who was trying to slide out of things, yeah.

GROSS: That's funny.

Mr. PRYCE: We had a good time with great actors and we--as if it were a
stage play, we rehearsed at length for a couple of weeks or so. It was good.

GROSS: My guest is actor Jonathan Pryce. We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Jonathan Pryce. He's starring in the London revival of
"My Fair Lady" and he plays composer and conductor Gustav Mahler in the new
film "Bride of the Wind."

Let's talk about your life a little bit. You grew up in Wales. Would you
describe the area that you're from?

Mr. PRYCE: It was quite a thriving, semi-industrial area of North Wales.
There were the hills where the farmers lived and the plateau where I lived and
then there was the--down on the coast and in the valleys where the industry
was centered. And it's a lot of coal mines. And now it's a very depressed
area, like much of Wales, because industry has moved out. The coal mines have
closed down. It's now very beautiful and green, but it's because nothing
happens there.

GROSS: Your parents ran a grocery store?

Mr. PRYCE: Mm-hmm. Yeah. My father was originally a coal miner and then he
met my mother and they opened a small grocery shop in a village.

GROSS: Did you have to work in the store?

Mr. PRYCE: I didn't have to. I did when my father was older and he was ill.
And I used to help him out a little. We used to go out on the--he drove a
mobile shop, a van that you sold groceries from the back of the van around the
housing estates and things. So I went out on that and made a few deliveries
with him and occasionally worked in the shop, yeah.

GROSS: Did doing that expose you to different types of people that maybe you
were able to draw on later for characterizations?

Mr. PRYCE: I don't remember. I remember all the characters, and there were
a lot of characters at the time who came into the shop. There were people
from a previous generation. It--they seemed from another--when I think back
on them, now, they were very much another world. It was the pre-war and
immediate post-war world of the women who worked in the textile mills and the
paper mills that were near the shop. It was a very poor area, so there was
lots of characters I remember. Most of them owed us money. That's what I
remember most.

GROSS: They owed you money, did you say?

Mr. PRYCE: Yes. My father survived, once the supermarkets opened, in the
town. He survived on giving credit to all the people who'd spent their money
at the supermarkets and then they needed groceries towards the end of the
week, which they would get on credit, you know, from my father. And then you
would have to go and collect the money from them.

GROSS: Did you have to do that; to go and collect the money?

Mr. PRYCE: Yeah. Yeah. I still remember those people who still owe us
money, so I could still knock on their doors.

GROSS: That's an awful position to be in, though, isn't it?

Mr. PRYCE: Oh, it was horrible. It wasn't a great time, no; not for my
father, anyway, who'd--he was a very popular man in the village prior to this
and, you know, he had a very nice life and then--I don't know if it means
anything to you, but the advent of supermarkets and large-scale, you know,
stores, it killed off a lot of the small businesses and it certainly ruined my
father's way of life.

GROSS: Your father was also, I think, attacked in the store and that resulted
in a stroke and he died, I think, just a couple of years after that.

Mr. PRYCE: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: How old were you at the time of the attack?

Mr. PRYCE: I was--what was I? I was in my late 20s. I was direct--when he
was attacked, initially, I was directing in the theater in Liverpool, which
was not very far away from where we lived. And he died, as you say, about two
years later. Actually, while I was in New York doing "Comedians," he died.

GROSS: Did...

Mr. PRYCE: But that informed--I mean, I managed to work out a lot of things
about my father through various plays that I did, especially "Comedians,"
which was about, ostensibly, a relationship between a young man and an older
teacher. It was the kind of father-son relationship that I was never really
capable of and never was able to because while we were doing it and my father
saw it, that's when he had the stroke and lost his--we never spoke again. He
lost his power of speech. But it informed all kinds of things. The way I
played Hamlet, for instance, was informed by my feelings about my father
and...

GROSS: How?

Mr. PRYCE: Well, it was mainly to do--but the portrayal of the ghost of your
father and we reinterp--we wanted to find a way of interpreting the ghost--the
appearance of the father as shocking as it--to a modern audience as it would
have been when it was originally performed. This was 1980. "The Exorcist"
was still strong in people's minds and I explored ways of depicting possession
and people who spoke in tongues. And I'd thought I'd seen my father after
he'd died. A couple of times he appeared to me. And it was, I think, nothing
more than wishful fulfillment; that desire to see someone who was gone and it
was impossible.

And I sort of molded this to Hamlet, that he was so wracked with guilt not
doing anything to avenge his father's death, which is what I did at the time
when my father died, you know. Albeit through a stroke, it was initiated by a
violent act. And I'd felt no sense that I wanted to avenge his death. Hamlet
didn't revenge his father's death and Hamlet, wracked with guilt about this,
conjured up the image of his father, who then told him how he died. And this
was in a fit of possession and the voice of the father came from within me, so
I played the ghost very like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" speaking in this
strange, belly voice, possessed by the ghost of your father.

GROSS: You said that when your father was killed, you had no interest in
trying to avenge his death.

Mr. PRYCE: Well, I wouldn't say there was no interest, but it was something
I sublimated within myself. And my sisters felt very angry and other people
in the community felt very angry and wanted to deal violently with the young
man who'd done it, but I supposed I was a little more sanguine about it at the
time and felt helpless and nothing you--I could really do about it.

GROSS: So there was someone who stood trial for the attack?

Mr. PRYCE: Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. He was 16 and so he received a kind
of youth custody sentence for about six months.

GROSS: Now what happens to you, psychologically, when you feel you're
actually like working through one of the most emotionally potent experiences
of your life--you know, that you're working through that in this play?

Mr. PRYCE: You save money on therapy, I think. It was--it's a kind--it
becomes almost a celebration of that aspect of your life and the aspect--you
know, how I felt about my father. And it was a very positive way of dealing
with things. I didn't do it in order to deal with positively with it or
think--thought of it at the time as therapy, but in retrospect, it was the
best thing I could have done.

GROSS: I'm thinking, though, that if a director doesn't like what you're
doing, it would be particularly difficult and particularly painful to change
because you're not only playing Hamlet, you're acting out your deepest
feelings about your father.

Mr. PRYCE: Hmm. Well...

GROSS: So you have so much personally on the line there.

Mr. PRYCE: Yeah. Well, the director was Richard Ayer(ph), who was a
personal friend. I've worked with him for quite a number of
productions--worked in his company at Nottingham for a year or so. He knew me
very well and it was--this was something we worked out together. It was--I
didn't go to him and say, `This is how I want to approach "Hamlet."' It was
something that evolved in discussions prior to rehearsals and during
rehearsals and, you know, if it hadn't been valid, neither us would have
wished to have pursued it, but it seemed very right at the time.

GROSS: My guest is actor Jonathan Pryce. More after a break. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Jonathan Pryce. He plays Gustav Mahler in the new film
"Bride of the Wind."

At this same time that you're starring in the new movie "Bride of the Wind,"
you're starring in London in a West End production of "My Fair Lady"...

Mr. PRYCE: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...as Professor Henry Higgins. Just for any of our listeners who
aren't familiar with the story of "My Fair Lady," Professor Henry Higgins
decides to take a poor woman selling flowers in the street and make her into a
proper lady. And the way he goes about this is to, like, you know, not only
train her in etiquette, but to teach her to speak proper English and, you
know, to lose her cockney accent. And, of course, "The Rain in Spain Falls
Mainly on the Plain" is the song in which he teaches her how to speak proper
English. I'm wondering what kind of proper accent you use, you know, because
Henry Higgins has to speak the most proper English. Is that an English that's
natural to you or are you speaking a different English than you usually speak?

Mr. PRYCE: Well, I'm Welsh, so my basic accent is--well, it was before I
went to drama school--was a Welsh accent. And I've learned how to speak
English, as it were. But my version of received pronunciation--RP, as it's
called here--according to Patsy Rodenberg, who is the voice coach and the
voice expert at the National Theater where we're doing the play, she's--the
recording she's listened to of the time, which is the early 1900s, my accent
is pretty much how they spoke. It's not the accent I'm talking with now.
It's a little more proper, but it's not what people think good English is,
which came about through the '20s and '30s; that very clipped, sort of Noel
Coward version of English. It's a much more straightforward version. Vowel
sounds are correct. I don't, in my natural speaking voice, all the time have
correct vowel sounds because whereas English people say `grass' (pronounced
grahs), I say `grass.' And people say `bath' (pronounced bahth), I say
`bath.' And that's much to the amusement of my children, who think I speak
strangely, at times, because they've been brought up in England.

GROSS: Patsy Rodenberg, the speak and dialect expert who you mentioned, has
been a guest on our show and we're great admirers of her. What advice did she
give you?

Mr. PRYCE: She said, `You're doing just fine.'

GROSS: I guess that's the best advice of all.

Mr. PRYCE: I went to her, actually, because she hadn't said anything to me
and I said, `Patsy, is it OK what I'm doing?' She said, `No. It's perfect.'
So I didn't push it. That was fine for me, yeah.

GROSS: OK. So tonight you're performing in "My Fair Lady" on the West End.

Mr. PRYCE: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: Do you have to take care of yourself in a different way when you've
got nightly performances?

Mr. PRYCE: Yeah, you do. I don't do--this is the most talking I'll do
today. I don't do very much. The show is quite long. It's three and a
quarter hours, so we--I'm kind of out of my dressing room at 11:15 at night
and there ain't a lot I want to do then. I get home; everyone's gone to bed,
so I'm usually--I sit up reading till about 2:00 in the morning.

GROSS: What are you reading?

Mr. PRYCE: Newspapers. I spend hours reading the newspapers. We've got the
general election this week, so there's acres of political reporting to do, so
it's quite amusing at the moment, but we have the vote on Thursday. We have a
different system to you. I don't know if you know because when our voting
system--whoever gets the most votes becomes prime minister.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. PRYCE: So, I don't know, call us old fashioned. There you go.

GROSS: Well, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. PRYCE: OK. Thank you.

GROSS: Jonathan Pryce recorded earlier this week. He plays composer and
conductor Gustav Mahler in the new film "Bride of the Wind." Pryce is also
starring in the London revival of "My Fair Lady." We'll close with him
singing a song from the show from a recording that he made before the show for
the 1998 CD "Hey, Mr. Producer," paying tribute to producer Cameron
Mackintosh.

(Soundbite from "My Fair Lady")

Mr. PRYCE (As Professor Henry Higgins): Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! I've
grown accustomed to her face.

(Singing) It almost makes the day begin. I've grown accustomed to the tune
she whistles night and noon; her smile, her frown, her ups, her downs are
second nature to me now, like breathing out and breathing in. I was supremely
independent and content before we met. Surely, I could always be that way
again and, yet, I've grown accustomed to her looks, accustomed to her voice,
accustomed to her face.

GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our engineer today is
Bob Purdick(ph). Sue Spolan directed the show. I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: On the next FRESH AIR, David Sedaris reads from and talks about his
best-selling book "Me Talk Pretty One Day." It's just out in paperback. And
we hear from actor Alan Cumming. He co-wrote, co-directed and co-stars in the
new film "The Anniversary Party."

I'm Terry Gross. Join us for the next FRESH AIR.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.