In Netflix's 'Ripley,' Andrew Scott Humanizes a Legendary ConmanExBulletin

In the new series Ripley, Andrew Scott plays a con man with no conscience, but he says his first job was to humanize his character: “I found all the words like sociopath And psychopath, monster, evil villain, “All these things are kind of useless,” he says. “For me, I think your first job is to kind of defend the characters and try not to judge them. So I try not to label it too much.”

Scott is best known for his role as “Hot Priest” in the comedy series Fleabag. He plays Moriarty, the sworn enemy of Sherlock Holmes, in the British series Sherlock. He also appeared in war films We must save Private Ryan, band of brothers And 1917. Scott recently won a National Society of Film Critics award for his role in the 2023 film. All of us, strangers.

He now plays Tom Ripley in the new Netflix series adapted by Steven Zaillian from Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel. The Talented Mr. Ripley. After surviving on small scams, Ripley lands a bigger one when a rich man, Mr. Greenleaf, finds him with a proposition: Mr. Greenleaf pays Ripley to go to Italy, where his son Dickie lives with his girlfriend, and convince Dickie to return home to the United States. Ripley accepts the offer, but when he meets Dickie and his girlfriend and sees Dickie's luxurious lifestyle, he wants that for himself. So he plots a way to impersonate Dickie and claim the riches for himself.

Scott thinks people tend to dehumanize people or characters who do things. “I understand that the acts that people can perpetuate are monstrous but they are not monsters,” he says. “They are human beings. And we have to accept that this darkness resides in us. And we also have to, conversely, accept that there is also a real lightness in us. And so the humanity of people is that who I'm really interested in and why I guess I like acting. …I think through stories we can increase our empathy.

Interview Highlights

On Patricia Highsmith hiding her sexuality while writing the character Ripley, who also had a hidden identity

[Highsmith was] I'm definitely talking about troubled times in society and a lot of these things are coded. And there are certainly things she can't talk about explicitly. And I think she's using Tom Ripley as an imp. She really loved the character. And so, yes, I understand that feeling of hiding. There's something about this character that, to me, is quite elusive and maybe just secretive, even to himself.

There are so many of us and I think that's why the character is so enduring and foreign to us. You know, we do things that aren't necessarily deadly, but we do things that we think, “I have absolutely no idea where that came from.” Or there are parts of us that seem mysterious to us. And I think that's true for Tom…

But for me, I think a lot of what she talks about is class. We see this very talented, isolated man who hasn't had access to any of the finer things in life simply because he's extremely gifted, and he lives in a rat-filled boarding house on the Lower East Side. And then he's transplanted to a beautiful country where these very skilled people, with half the talent as him, are exposed to everything. And I think a kind of rage emerges in him that he was unaware of until now. And I think that might also reveal the kind of sexuality in him, perhaps that he's uncomfortable with, as well as lust and a kind of passion.

As a young actor, I worry that being a gay man might limit his roles.

It's something that I was very concerned about as a young actor…and I wouldn't have that opportunity if I had to sort of choose between playing roles that I felt suited to and having a personal life and being at comfortable. in me. And I'm so grateful that I don't have to think about that anymore. But it's an absurd idea.

The pleasure of the public is to see an actor transform. I always say that representation is very important, but so is the transformation within an actor. This is one of the things that I think is a true gift that human beings have. When our mother tells us a bedtime story when we are children and she pretends to be a wolf, we find it exciting. We're like, “I know it's my mom here, but she knows she's in that funny voice and I feel safe.” And we understand something very primal, which is that we are able to empathize and embody other people and other facets of [ourselves], in order to survive and connect. And the same goes for sexuality.

On What Happens When He Does Tom Ripley's Creepy Blank Stare

I think what's interesting about Tom Ripley is that we were watching this very bright person think, and I think it's a great pleasure for the audience to see a… particularly intelligent character use his brain in a very particular way. …This void…is actually just in the audience's mind and not necessarily a void that I'm consciously trying to evoke, and so I find audience participation in the performance really interesting and I think some Most interesting performances are where you invite the audience into a kind of complicity with you, and they have to do a little job. And conversely, the least satisfying performances are the ones where you think, oh my God, we're being spoon-fed here, and we have absolutely no doubt about what we should think.

On the phrasing of Hamlet's soliloquy “to be or not to be” in his award-winning performance of the play

I guess the problem with breaks is that he thinks: am I going to live or am I going to die? And we see it live. Your job is to not act out the famous speech. …This speech was not written to be famous. It was just written to be authentic. And it's someone who thinks: am I going to do this? Or am I not going to do this? And no one is watching him, so why shouldn't he take his time?

Much of the language is archaic, but many words we still use today were invented by Shakespeare. So I have a real passion for Shakespeare, which is that he shouldn't be kidnapped by academics. It's a very exploitable thing, and for young actors, if you really examine it and you're not intimidated and told it's not for you, then actually, it should be really, really accessible. You may not understand every word, but in the same way, you may not understand or understand every word in a rap song. You understand that there's a musicality to it, and there's a feeling that you have to feel that could be spiritual, or it could be contemplative, whatever it is. And it's incredibly actionable.

Finding both joy and sadness in each character

I have the impression that we must always move towards lightness when we are faced with a tragedy and a bit like Flea bag. When we talk about comedy, we're looking for the soul. And that's what I think great art, or certainly art that I'm interested in, has a little bit of both because that's who we are as human beings. …We laugh on the saddest day of our lives, and we cry in the middle of brunch when we don't think we're going to. This is always what is always within us, at all times, the possibility of going in both directions.

Lauren Krenzel and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.