Andrew Scott (performing as Ripley)
Appearances
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
So it's not the abstinence that I have the problem with. It's the silence around the abstinence and the way that people in a position of power silence people who want to be able to talk about that. And so...
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
The reason that I found that character so cathartic is that, you know, when I first had the conversation with Phoebe, I don't want to play a sort of a stereotype of somebody who is extreme in that way. This is a human being. I think that's why we like that character because he does have a faith. I think it's a wonderful thing to be able to have romantic feelings and to also have faith.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
and to be able to talk about the human struggle. And so I love the fact that this quite radical sexual kind of risque series has at its center a real addressing for young people of what faith is because I think there's a real gap in the for people of my generation who have been let down by the church and feel like it's not for them.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
To have a still space is something that would be wonderful for them if they were made feel welcome. And I think that's perhaps why Fleabag appealed to so many people, because it wasn't cynical. I think we tried to talk about religion and In, of course, a humorous way, but also in a way that isn't just too judgmental of the Catholic Church.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Actually, this is a person who really is struggling and is a human being.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Yes, exactly. Remain committed. Exactly. To see that struggle, like in any relationship, in a marriage, you think, this is tough. This relationship is hard. How do I keep it going? How do I talk about it? It's not just blind devotion the whole time. In any relationship, you question it. And it's how you approach those crises that makes us honorable and courageous.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And that's a wonderful thing to be able to convey and also, of course, just to just address.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Yeah, they did actually. I had really, really positive feedback from priests. I think because they, like all of us, like to see themselves represented in a sort of fair way and that they're not just these pious, flawless people. I think most of the feedback I got was really, really wonderful.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
I feel very lucky that I feel that there was nothing that I needed to say to my mum or I feel there was nothing that she needed to say to me that was left unsaid. So I feel very grateful for that.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Wow, is it really? I think that's really fascinating for audiences to watch. I think audiences love to watch characters think and feel. And, you know, so much of what we say is less important than what we convey. And that's one of the things I love about acting is that you don't... What you say...
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
accounts for a certain amount of things, but actually a lot of the time we're saying things while we're feeling some other things. That's really representative, I think, of the way human beings behave.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Yeah, it's sort of what happens a lot. It's just the way we are.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Yeah. Yeah, it's brilliant. It's so truthful. The screenplay was so incredibly truthful. And I love the fact that it's sort of, that film has really, I love the fact that the way films are distributed now that they get to a really, really wide audience. And it's really affected so many different types of people.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Because everybody has a relationship with their parents, whether their parents are alive or not, or whether they are parents themselves. Everybody at some point has a relationship with them, whether they're in their lives or not, or whether they're a parent or not. And I think most people have a relationship with falling in love.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
So I love the fact that that film, because it's sort of unusual, there's a dreamlike quality to it, sort of is able to tap into huge swathes of different experiences. I think it's really special, that film.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Do you know what happens if you don't leave me alone, Sherlock? To you. Oh, let me guess. I get killed. Kill you? No, don't be obvious. I mean, I'm going to kill you anyway someday. I don't want to rush it, though. I'm saving it up for something special. No, no, no, no, no. If you don't stop prying, I'll burn you. I will burn the heart out of you.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
I have been reliably informed that I don't have one. But we both know that's not quite true. Well, I'd better be off. Well, it's so nice to have had a proper chat. What if I was to shoot you now, right now? Then you could cherish the look of surprise on my face. Because I'd be surprised, Sherlock, really, I would. And just a teensy bit disappointed.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And, of course, you wouldn't be able to cherish it for very long. Channel Sherlock Holmes. Catch you later.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
My audition was incredibly fun. Just the day before, I knew that they were auditioning people to play Moriarty, and their original idea was that this character would appear almost like just an image, and it would say something like, and that would be the end of the series.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
But then when they realized that lots of actors coming into audition just saying, hello, Sherlock, doesn't give them much of an idea of the actor's range, you know, for future series if they cast this actor. So they quickly wrote, Stephen Moffat, the writer, quickly wrote that scene, which eventually appeared as the scene we've just listened to, as an audition scene for actors
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Marge, I'm sorry, but you gotta understand, I don't love you. We're friends, that's all. Come on, don't, don't cry. That's not gonna work, Marge. Stop it. Because you're interfering with Tom and me. No, no, no, no. It's not like that. It's not that. We're not that. No, there's a bond between us. Can you understand that? Or are you just going to keep making accusations?
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
to read in the audition. And they sent it maybe, I don't know, the night before the audition. And I thought, wow, this is really fun. And I was aware that I didn't look like a villain at the time. I had quite a sort of boyish face and stuff. And so I took great pleasure in frightening them. And I knew in the audition that they were amused, but also that they were scared. LAUGHTER
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Yeah, yeah, I was. I feel like one of the things that I feel quite fortunate about is that I feel quite near my emotions, you know. I feel that's stood me in good stead as an actor. I feel like it's an enormously, I don't know, it feels healthy to me to be able to access that part of you but not really do any harm, you know. Yeah, it's a funny thing, isn't it, to be an actor?
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Well, I don't know. How am I supposed to know if you don't know?
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
I suppose the thing about the pauses is that he's thinking, am I going to live or am I going to die? And we're seeing that live. And, you know, your job... is to not play the famous speech. Your job is to just, that speech wasn't written to be famous, it was just written to be authentic. And this is somebody who's thinking, am I going to do this? Or am I not going to do this?
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And nobody's watching him. So why wouldn't he take his time? You know, a lot of the language is archaic, but a lot of words that we still use today were invented by Shakespeare. So I have this real passion about Shakespeare that It shouldn't be kidnapped by academics. It's something that's very actable.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And for young actors, if you really examine it and you're not intimidated and you're not told this isn't for you, then actually it should be really, really accessible.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
you may not understand every single word but in the same way you may not understand or get every word in a rap song you understand that there's a musicality to it and there's a feeling that you have to get and that could be witty or it could be contemplative or it could be whatever it is and it's incredibly actable and also Hamlet is incredibly funny and so it was just like with all things it's just to be able to to ignore the famousness of the play in fact we had a thing in rehearsal called the famous play buzzer
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
where you're like are we just doing this just because everybody knows this is what you would do like Hamlet's father appears to him as a ghost at the beginning of the of the story and we don't know we should unlearn the fact that we don't know that that character could be in that character who only appears fleetingly
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
But we know that probably because we know the play so well that actually he just appears to him and then he goes for the majority of the play. But for a 16-year-old who's watching it, they don't know that this character isn't going to be by his side for the rest of the show.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
So you have to unlearn what you already know about the famousness of the play in the same way you have to unlearn all the stuff that you know about Tom Ripley or... James Moriarty or anything that, you know, when you're reinterpreting a famous story. So I found all that really interesting.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And all the stuff about Hamlet to me is fascinating because people say, oh, he's the dark prince and he's wearing, you know, the inky black cloak and blah, blah, blah. But actually, this is just a guy which, you know, I very much understand. At the moment, which is a guy who's in mourning. His father has died very, very recently.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
So the question is that you don't drown that character in just, oh, he's just a dark, depressing guy. Where was his lightness? And so I feel like you always have to go towards the lightness when you're dealing with tragedy. And a little bit like Fleabag, then you... when you're dealing with comedy, you to look for the soul.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And that's what I think the great art or certainly the art that I am interested in, you know, has a bit of both because that's the way we are as human beings. You know, we like a bit of both. We laugh on the saddest day of our life and we cry, you know, in the middle of a brunch when we don't think we're going to. It's always within us all the time, the potential to go in either direction.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
It depends. I'm very lucky. I can walk the streets pretty easily, you know.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
I think we've been saying that for a while, so hopefully I'll be able to duck and dive into the future.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
I did a little. I found all the words like sociopath and psychopath and monster, evil, villain, all those things sort of largely unhelpful. And really I just kind of thought about the character in stages and like A lot of Shakespearean characters, when they say when you play a Shakespearean king or something, you don't play the king. Everybody else plays the king.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
So everybody's allowed to be as frightened and intimidated by Tom as they like and to diagnose him in whatever way they see fit. But for me, I think your first job is to sort of advocate for the character and try not to judge them. And so I try not to label him too much.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And actually a lot of the challenge is to sort of unlearn the stuff we might know from the character's reputation, you know, to yank it back from the possession that the audience sort of has of him.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Yeah, the film adaptations and to sort of think, okay, well, what do I read when I read these scripts? The scripts were...
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
really extraordinary and you know it's an eight hour adaptation of the novel so we have a sort of very particular opportunity in this one to spend an inordinate amount of time with a singular character an opportunity that you don't normally get in television where you spend so much time with one one character usually in television it's maybe a couple or a family or a hospital or police department or whatever
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
So it's not necessarily that you would be playing nothing. And I think what's interesting about Tom Ripley is that we're watching this very brilliant person think, and I think that's a great pleasure for an audience to watch a character, particularly an intelligent character, use his brain in a very particular way and to watch him make mistakes and to watch him go through all those stages.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And so a little bit like what you're talking about, that blankness that might exist in the audience's mind is actually just in the audience's mind and not necessarily a blankness that I'm consciously trying to conjure up, you know. And so I find that really interesting, the audience participation in performance.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And I think some of the most interesting performances are where you invite the audience into a kind of complicity with you, you know, and they have to do a little bit of work. And conversely, the kind of less satisfying performances are ones where you think, oh, my God, we're being spoon fed everything here and we're left in absolutely no doubt as to what we should be thinking.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Yeah, I do. I absolutely do. She's definitely talking about murky times in society and a lot of this stuff is coded. And there's certainly stuff that she can't speak explicitly about. And I think she uses Tom Ripley as her sort of imp. She really adored the character. And so, yeah, I do understand that feeling of hiding.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
There's something about this character that to me is quite elusive and possibly just secretive, even to himself.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Yeah, there are so many of us, and I think this is the reason of why the character is so enduring, that are strangers to ourselves. You know, that we do things that aren't necessarily murderous, but that we do things we think, I have absolutely no idea where that came from. Or there's parts of us that are mysterious to ourselves. And I think that's true of Tom.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
He certainly works as a con artist, and I think he's fluid sometimes. He's a kind of fluid character and he certainly isn't a natural born killer and he certainly isn't a natural murderer. He doesn't like blood. He's invited to go to this with this task. It's not something that he seeks out himself. But to me, I think a lot of what she's talking about is class.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
You know, we see this very talented, isolated man who has been given no access to any of the beautiful things in life, despite being extremely gifted. And he lives in a rat-filled boarding house in the Lower East Side. And then he's transplanted to a beautiful country where these very entitled people with half the talent that he has are exposed to everything.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And I think a sort of rage emerges in him that he's hitherto sort of unaware of. And I think it also might unearth a sort of sexuality within him possibly that he's uncomfortable with and an envy and a kind of passion for.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
To a certain extent. I certainly knew that Steve Zalian, our director, was very concerned with how the imagery looked. And he was very fastidious about that. So, yeah, it did involve a lot of waiting around. And one of the challenges of the... of the character is, of course, that he's isolated. And, you know, we shot it towards the end of the pandemic.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And I certainly think that the atmosphere, you know, on the set and in the world at the time definitely permeated the feeling that I had in the process and probably in the performance to some degree.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
It's not fact. It's poetry. It's moral code. It's for interpretation to help us work out God's plan for us. What's God's plan for you? I believe God meant for me to love people in a different way. I believe I'm supposed to love people as a father. We can arrange that. A father of many. I'll go up to three. It's not going to happen. Two then. Okay, two.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
No, don't do that. I like that you believe in a meaningless existence. And you're good for me. You make me question my faith.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
That's very kind and also impossible to answer. Yeah, no, I completely adore Phoebe.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
No, no. The priests that I knew were not young or attractive.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Well, I think it was a huge role in my life growing up. The culture is based on the Catholic Church. Ireland is a small country. I was at a Jesuit school. I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore, but certainly the culture... around Catholicism as one that is very hard to dispel. And parts of it are wonderful. I think the sort of focus on community within the Catholic Church is really wonderful.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
And there's also, of course, the huge amount of corruption and abuse that happened when I was growing up in the 90s. I remember driving to school. My father would drive me to school in the mornings and we would listen to the news in the morning and You know, my very strong memory is of just a whole litany of abuse cases within the Catholic Church just coming out every morning.
Fresh Air
Andrew Scott Doesn't See Ripley As A Monster
Sexual abuse and not just sexual abuse, but infidelity within marriages and marriages where people would be, you know, having affairs with priests and, you know, but mainly sexual abuse.