Fleabag, Spectre, and All of Us Strangers superstar Andrew Scott has nuanced feelings about playing the character of Tom Ripley in the brand-new Netflix series.
Based on the 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, Netflix’s Ripley is a remake of the book rather than a sequel to the Matt Damon-starring 1999 film. In an interview with Out, Scott was asked about the “morally gray” character that some audiences perceive as “evil.” The actor replied:
“Yeah, I have a real problem with the word evil. I think that he’s not evil. I think evil is an extremity. What’s interesting [is that] I think gray is a very good description of the character in some ways. And I think that’s probably why the black and white works, because the character is so sort of opaque in some way. But certainly, yeah, I definitely think that we use big words like ‘monstrous’ and ‘evil’ and ‘psychopathic.’ [But] I don’t think this character fits into that description.”
Scott continued, “I think what’s frightening about this character is that he’s actually human. He’s not particularly adept at it, actually. He's adept at other things. He’s got a big brain and he’s very talented, but he makes mistakes, and he does all this stuff out of necessity, not out of a sort of bloodthirstiness. So I separate him from… I do think of James Moriarty as a villain because that’s sort of different genre, but I think the tone of this is just slightly different. I certainly love playing the different aspects of him. I enjoy playing the darkness of him, but there’s a huge amount of lightness and vulnerability in the character, too.”
Given that other actors have played Tom Ripley in past live-action adaptations of the original novel, Scott also reflected on his performance when bringing this character to life. “We [spend] a huge amount of time with the character. We see him a lot on his own. We see where he begins,” Scott explains. “I suppose the challenge for it was to not diagnose him with anything. That’s what I really felt like I had to do. Not to diagnose his pathology or his sexuality or his nationality or even his age too much.”
He concluded, “People have so many questions about this character, and those questions are unanswerable, [which] makes the character interesting. So, for me to sort of diagnose him or answer too many questions actually reduces the character. I think that’s the whole point of what Highsmith is writing about: some people, we just can’t know [who they are].”
We stan Andrew Scott in this house, and Ripley is yet another home run for the actor!
Ripley is now streaming on Netflix.