aWhen Andrew Scott smiles at you sympathetically, you immediately know what Fleabag must have felt when she first met the hot priest. There’s almost something magnetic about him, even when he does something as mundane as wishing you a nice day. So it’s not surprising that ‘sexy’ priest” Scott in the critically acclaimed series Flea bag became adored by millions of viewers. In fact, he grew into a true sex symbol.
And yet that smile of Scott (47) can also have something treacherous. The Irish actor uses him to endear, but sometimes also to frighten. Take, for example, the deeply felt urge to disrupt, to sow chaos, as we saw Scott do as classic villain Moriarty in the Sherlockseries starring Benedict Cumberbatch. But Scott also masters crushing vulnerability, as we recently saw in the heartbreaking film All of Us Strangers.
It is as if enchantment, villainy and vulnerability have united in one sympathetic Irish face.
About the author
Alex Mazereeuw writes for de Volkskrant about film and television.
All those characteristics make Scott the ideal actor to play Thomas ‘Tom’ Ripley. For those who are no longer quite clear: Ripley is the title character from Patricia Highsmith’s crime novels, and especially from her masterpiece The Talented Mr. Ripley. In that book, Tom Ripley is a small-time con man with no fixed abode in New York in the 1950s. He doesn’t have a serious job, so he spends his days mainly forging checks and letterbox fraud. It rarely delivers a real hit.
Mysterious man
But then one evening Ripley is suddenly chased by a mysterious man. That must be a cop or a detective, he thinks, because he has to be presented with the bill for his (crime) actions. In reality, the mysterious man turns out to be just an overprotective father, a shipping magnate who enlists Ripley’s help to bring his son Richard ‘Dickie’ Greenleaf back to the United States. Dickie once temporarily left for Italy to live the good life there with his ‘platonic’ girlfriend Marge, but now seems to have no intention of returning.
Father Greenleaf is under the impression that Ripley is an old college friend of his son, and is therefore the perfect person to travel to Italy – for a generous compensation – to get him back home. Although the friendship is a considerable exaggeration of reality (the two hardly know each other), Ripley does not miss the opportunity for an all-expenses-paid European adventure.
Once he arrives in a picturesque Italy, Ripley does his best to convince Dickie to return home, but he becomes mainly obsessed with this spoiled, capricious and attractive rich man’s son. The two quickly develop a warm friendship – to the horror of the hostile Marge. But when that friendship is in danger, Ripley proves willing to go to any lengths to protect his new, luxurious life, even if it means using violence.
Complex antihero
Long before the complex antihero (with whom we are not actually allowed to sympathize, but which we secretly do anyway) became hip through successful series such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Sopranosthere was already Ripley: an obsessive sociopath and murderer, but also a vulnerable orphan with whom you naturally sympathize because of his difficult youth and his lack of opportunities for a better life.
It is not without reason that Ripley was a rewarding role for top actors in film history. The Frenchman Alain Delon was the first in Purple Noonfollowed by Dennis Hopper (among others)The American Friend), Barry Pepper (Ripley Under Ground) and John Malkovich (Ripley’s Game). The best-known performance is still that of Matt Damon, in the much-loved (but not exactly faithful) film adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley from 1999, also starring Jude Law (as Dickie) and Gwyneth Paltrow (as Marge).
In 2024, think of an actor who can be vulnerable and dangerous as well as compelling, and you automatically come to Andrew Scott, who has already incorporated many of Ripley’s character traits into previous roles.
And yet the excellent eight-part series feels Ripley as a whole new step in Scott’s career, because he is in almost all the scenes and also produces the series. What helps is that the series, filmed in stunning black and white, also has a proven master at the controls behind the scenes: writer and director Steven Zaillian, who previously directed the HBO series The Night of made, and wrote films like The Irishman, Moneyball and Schindler’s List.
Own reading
Of Ripley Zaillian and Scott want to stay close to Highsmith’s original book, as opposed to, for example, the film The Talented Mr. Ripley – although Scott, in his forties, is a lot older than the twenties that Highsmith describes in her book. The actor was mainly guided by his own reading of the character and was not so interested in previous interpretations, he says when we spoke to him in a Zoom interview at the end of March.
“As with any great character in literary history, everyone has an opinion about how someone should be played and who the character should be,” Scott said. ‘I had that too: I had an idea from the start in which direction I wanted to go with Ripley. What helped was that I was allowed to read all the episodes straight away. This is quite unique in series, because you usually only get one or two scripts before you take on a role. Partly because of those brilliant scripts, I quickly got a handle on what the character should become.’
Incredible versatility
Scott said he found the starting points mainly in the ‘incredible versatility’ of the character. ‘Tom is vulnerable and is constantly rejected in his life, but at the same time he is also extremely smart and talented, and able to exercise a certain power over others. That combination is wonderful to play as an actor. For this we are all indebted to the timeless, brilliant work of Patricia Highsmith, whose writing style ensures that we constantly sympathize with Tom as he does the most terrible things.
‘But what I think sets him apart from other killers is that he doesn’t… natural born killer is. He is not bloodthirsty: most of his actions are mainly a necessary evil. That makes it easier for the public, and for me, to sympathize with him and hope that he gets away with his actions.’
Cultivate sympathy
Partly because of this, Scott had to make little effort to create sympathy for the character, also because Ripley is an underdog who challenges the spoiled class and wants to ‘get a taste’ of ‘the good life’.
Scott: ‘Highsmith writes a lot between the lines about the class system, how a certain part of society has disproportionate access to the beauties of life, such as art, culture, nature and travel. That makes it much easier for people like Dickie and Marge, with their painting and writing, to simply call themselves ‘artists’, when in reality they have not an ounce of talent.
‘The fascinating, and unfair, thing is that Tom does have those talents, but has never been given the opportunities or opportunities to do anything with them. And yet that does not hinder his appreciation for the beauty of life. This is reflected in the series: for Dickie and Marge, the beauty of art, culture and nature is self-evident, while Tom continues to have a kind of infectious enthusiasm for the good life and a deep will to see and learn things. In no time he speaks excellent Italian, becomes an excellent painter and learns everything about the classic Italian artists. And in the meantime he remains humble.’
Small smile: ‘In addition to the darker character traits, of course…’
Scott uses the word several times in his reflection on the character elusive, which means something like ‘elusive’. ‘Because of that elusiveness I had to try out a lot of things while playing Tom. Trying to catch Tom Ripley is a bit like retaining water. I don’t think anyone can ever really know what’s going on inside him, but that’s what makes him so timeless and fascinating.’
This also made the role a significant challenge. In a conversation with Vanity Fair Scott previously called the role of Ripley “one of the most challenging and tough roles” he had ever played, both physically and mentally. When asked what made the role so challenging, Scott again talks about the character’s elusiveness, but also mentions the arduous production process. That took almost a year, with the recordings also taking place during the corona pandemic.
Great responsibility
As producer and leading actor, Scott felt a great responsibility, and therefore also the pressure to carry the entire series. ‘I’m in 95 percent of the scenes, it was really bizarre! If you had to do almost every scene in a movie, it would take you almost three months to do it. Here it took almost a year.’ Short silence. “Gosh, when I say that out loud, it really does sound like an insane amount of time for one specific role. Yes, in that sense this was mainly a matter of endurance.’
What makes Scott’s role even more complex – and clever – is that we never really become part of his inner world. A conscious choice by Scott and Zaillian, who wanted to pre-empt the audience as little as possible.
‘You mainly have to understand what Tom thinks or feels by looking and observing. That was very important: we should not make it explicit. What makes Tom a rather atypical character is that he doesn’t feel at home anywhere. That is why we constantly see him as a lonely figure in this series: he has no one with whom he really feels at home, with whom he can vent. So we don’t show that in the series, and in my opinion it doesn’t have to. You don’t have to say everything out loud to understand what’s going on in a character.
Man with secrets
‘In this age of social media and endless online information, we always want to have as much information as possible at our disposal. But isn’t it sometimes more interesting to have a character about whom we don’t know everything? Personally, I think it’s great that Tom continues to maintain a certain elusiveness. At the end of those eight episodes, he is still a man with secrets. And even now, as I talk to you about him, I still think about certain decisions and interpretations that I never want or will ever share with anyone. Sometimes it’s much more satisfying if you let a character remain a little mysterious.’
One more time that sympathetic yet somewhat disruptive smile: ‘Aren’t the questions that Tom Ripley raises much more interesting than the answers?’
The series Ripley can be seen on Netflix from 4/4.
Best actor in theater and film
In addition to his celebrated film and TV roles, Andrew Scott is also celebrated for his stage work. For example, he recently won the most important British theater prize – that of the Critics’ Circle, the British critics – for the Chekhov adaptation Vanya, a solo performance in which he played all eight roles. Earlier this year, British film critics also awarded Scott the prize for best actor for his leading role in All of Us Strangers. It was the first time that both Critics’ Circle awards went to the same actor.
