Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

My thanks as always for clicking and listening along.

Got a great one for you this week with an Academy Award winner.

Yes, Mr. Benicio del Toro.

He's had an incredible career and an incredible life story that you probably don't know that much about. I was excited to sit down with him because he's starring. He's the lead in the new Wes Anderson movie, The Phoenician Scheme. If you love Wes Anderson, you are going to absolutely be thrilled by this movie because it gets back to kind of the royal tenenbaum vibe of

Wes Anderson. All his movies are great in some way, but the story of this one centers around

a man named Jaja Corta, who has a little royal tenon bomb in him, in that he's very flawed,

he's very wealthy, and in this case, there's an assassination attempt against him

about every 15 minutes of the movie as he tries to figure out this scheme and reconcile with his

family. It's really, really great. And a big leading role for Benicio del Toro. He absolutely

nails it. You know, he won an Oscar for his performance in traffic. He was in 21 grams, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, snatch. The list goes on and on and on. He's had an incredible career. He grew up in a neighborhood of San Juan Puerto Rico. Mother died when he was very young. When he's 13 years old, he moves up rural pennsylvania his family moves up that way he goes

to a boarding school that's really kind of halfway between philly and pittsburg a great school

jimmy stewart went there by the way the great legend of hollywood now another legend of

hollywood benicio del torro but he talks about how difficult that was in trying to find his people as an athlete.

He didn't even find the theater and the stage or acting at all until he went to college, and he was off to the races from there.

I think you'll really enjoy sitting and spending some time with a guy that you probably love on the screen, but don't hear a lot from or about behind the scenes. So sit back, relax, and enjoy right now. My conversation with Benicio

del Toro on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Benicio, great to see you. Thank you, Willie. Thanks for doing

this. Thank you. I just finished watching the Phoenician scheme.

It is vintage Wes Anderson, one of his best, I would say, as a fan of his work.

How do you describe sort of the scheme and the caper that we go on here in this film? Well, I think we follow this character,

Shahjah, Korda, and that's the character I play.

And we follow him through this journey

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