“That’s the cool thing about the show, I think, is that there is something for everyone,” says Alex Sharp. “As cliche as that is to say, I really feel that.”
Sharp is such an intentional and earnest speaker that even the most obvious cliches wouldn’t read as such coming from him — nevermind that the point he’s making is easily backed up. The show he’s referencing is “3 Body Problem,” a Netflix series of Chinese author Liu Cixin’s hit book trilogy “Remembrance of Earth’s Past,” adapted for television by “Game of Thrones” showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and “True Blood” writer Alexander Woo. The show has fans in the sci-fi world, but due to the books’ popularity — not to mention the popularity of the creators’ past work — it has found a far and wide audience.
Sharp plays Will, a character who intrigued him early on when he noticed Will’s quiet nature amongst the rest of the scientists.
“He’s a very humble character. That made him kind of stand out from the other characters for me,” Sharp says. “But then the journey he goes on and the almost spiritual awakening that he comes to through very unfortunate circumstances…when I thought about achieving that as an actor, I felt like throwing up. I was like, how do you get there?”
In the show’s second episode, Will learns he has stage four pancreatic cancer. Sharp worked with a few different death doulas in preparation, an experience he says was life changing.
“It’s a really brave and important job, which I think addresses a hole in Western society’s mentality toward mortality. It was incredible. I mean, it kind of changed my life, to be honest,” he says.
Sharp, who is 35, grew up in the U.K. and launched his career immediately after graduating from Juilliard with a professional acting debut on Broadway in “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” He went on to win the Tony for Best Actor in a Play, as well as a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award. Not too bad for one’s first job.
The experience was “very intense,” he says now, and it left him needing to take some time to recover — which led him to try doing screen work.
“I’d done theater all my life, not professionally, but I was excited to just start cutting my teeth on screen. So I’ve been focusing on that and, over the years, there have been a few things where it’s like, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll go back and do [theater]’ and it’s just never quite happened. But now I’m really, really interested in getting back. It will kind of feel like going home, to be honest.”
After he wrapped work on “3 Body Problem,” he once again needed some time to clear his head — so naturally, he spent five months in Florence learning to make leather handbags.
“Being in that mindset of the character for such a long time, I just needed time afterward. It kind of stayed with me in a way that other characters have not,” he says. “I’ve needed to just, I don’t know what the word is, but yeah, it’s taken longer than normal.”
Sharp first learned he likes to work with his hands a few years ago when he built a house for his father, who was not well.
“It wasn’t just utilitarian. It was very quite a creative process, more so than I was even expecting. It was so profound,” he says. “And I like to take breaks from acting and do other things, so I thought for a while maybe I’ll study architecture, because that was such a satisfying experience. But the thing about architecture is you need a lot of people’s permission to do it. It’s way more expensive than I can afford. I can’t just be going around building houses.”
Which led him to wonder what might give him a similar creative outlet, on a more practical scale.
“Everything you need to make a bag can fit in one small room. I love fashion. So I landed on bags,” he says.
Sharp is “dying” to return to theater, and says there’s a film in the works he hopes to star in but won’t discuss for fear of jinxing; otherwise he’s reading scripts and diving into his new craft.
“I’m in no rush. It is just a crazy period of my life personally. A lot’s happened this year,” he says. “So I’m just kind of taking my time and making bags at the moment.”
