Marvel icon Paul Bettany: Salieri is the 'bad-guy every man' of 'Amadeus'

NEW YORK, May 8 (UPI) --Avengers, A Beautiful Mind and A Knight's Tale icon Paul Bettany says he approached the historic role of Antonio Salieri in the limited series, Amadeus, the same way he has his other characters -- by first considering what he wants and what he is afraid of.

Premiering Friday on Starz, Joe Barton's adaptation of Peter Shaffer's stage play casts Will Sharpe as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, an outrageous 25-year-old maestro who takes 18th-century Vienna by storm, much to the chagrin of Salieri (Bettany), the city's devoutly religious court composer.

"I feel like [Salieri] is such a great baddie and what makes him a great baddie is how well you're able to understand him and how broken he feels that God has chosen Mozart, not him, and how truly devastating that is for him," Bettany told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

"That's quite moving. So as awful as his behavior is, I think he's really relatable. He's like a bad-guy 'every man.'"

As Mozart grows more popular, he also spirals into madness, overwhelmed by the music in his head.

Meanwhile, Salieri is consumed with jealousy and, instead of helping the younger genius, he tries to exhaust and degrade him.

Bettany said he and Sharpe developed a strong bond of trust so they could play these emotionally taxing scenes and still walk away friends when the cameras stopped rolling at the end of the day.

"You would be surprised how many actors -- when you're working with them -- [make] you feel like it's a sporting event and they're kind of trying to beat you acting," Bettany explained.

"I don't know why I'm always surprised, but I am," he added. "It was so nice to be in a room with an actor who seemed to feel the same way I did, which is that we can become more than the sum of our parts, if we work together."

The final scenes depicting Mozart on his death bed succeeded because of a combination of the actors' artistic instincts, a finely tuned screenplay and the direction of Alice Seabright, according to Bettany.

"I'd been somebody who had lots and lots of plans because, I guess, the part was like that. I had loads and loads of plans. I didn't understand at all how we were going to play those final scenes and get across what needed to be gotten across," he recalled.

"And it magically happened in the room because of Alice Seabright, who's a fantastic director, but, largely, because I think Will and I really respected and trusted each other and felt safe with each other."

Bettany hopes the music-themed series reminds 21st-century, tech-obsessed viewers about the brilliance and excitement of human beings creating great art and sharing it together.

"There's absolutely something unquantifiable that's going on when you go to see live music or live theater or watch two actors work together," he said.

"As you know, I play an A.I. in my other life," he laughed, referring to his character JARVIS/Vision in WandaVision and Iron Man. "I think [this show's] a really good antidote to that."

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This story was originally published May 8, 2026 at 6:27 AM.