Other segments from the episode on February 21, 2025
Transcript
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Today's guest, actor Andrew Scott, got noticed by many American TV viewers because of his role in the second season of the British comedy series "Fleabag." He played the so-called hot priest, who was torn between his vow of celibacy and his attraction to a woman who loves him. Before that, Scott got rave reviews in another British series that made it to the U.S., "Sherlock," which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes. Andrew Scott played the famed detective's nemesis, Moriarty. In the U.K., he starred in several acclaimed stage productions, including plays by Shakespeare and Chekhov.
Terry spoke with Andrew Scott last year, and the reason we're returning to the interview is because he's been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award for his starring performance in the 2024 Netflix series "Ripley." The SAG Awards ceremony is Sunday night. "Ripley" is based on the Patricia Highsmith novel "The Talented Mr. Ripley," the first of several books about Tom Ripley, a con man with no conscience. He's a cold-blooded opportunist who most probably is a sociopath. Matt Damon played Ripley in a 1999 movie version, but the Netflix version, written and directed by Steve Zaillian, is an even bigger and better adaptation. It was beautifully photographed in various scenic cities, and Andrew Scott as Ripley carried almost every scene with a sense of mystery, magnetism, and maybe even a touch of madness.
As the Netflix version begins, Ripley is scraping by on small-time hustles when a wealthy man tracks Ripley down and offers him an unusual proposition. The man believes that Ripley was a close college friend of the man's son, Dickie, and he offers to pay Ripley to go to Italy, visit Dickie at the villa where he's living a layabout life with his girlfriend and persuade him to return home to the States. Even though Ripley's friendship with Dickie was much more distant than the father presumed, Dickie accepts the assignment. But when he gets to Italy and the villa, he wants it all for himself - the home on the beach, the fine art on the walls, Dickie's expensive watches and finely tailored clothes. He begins plotting a way to assume Dickie's identity and step into his life.
In this scene, Andrew Scott as Ripley is alone in Dickie's villa admiring the clothes in Dickie's closet. He tries them on. They fit nicely. And he also tries on Dickie's voice and mannerisms. He's sitting on the side of Dickie's bed, pretending he's Dickie, and also pretending that he's breaking up with Dickie's girlfriend.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "RIPLEY")
ANDREW SCOTT: (As Tom Ripley) Marge, I'm sorry, but you've got to understand. I don't love you. We're friends. That's all. Oh, come on. Don't cry. That's not going to 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? Can you understand anything? Come on, Marge.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS: It's not that (laughter). Andrew Scott, welcome to FRESH AIR. You are so terrific. It's a pleasure to have you on the show.
SCOTT: Oh, pleasure to be here, Terry.
GROSS: What did you need to know about the mind of Tom Ripley to play him? I mean, is he desperate for money? Is he a sociopath? Do you have to think about what his motivation is?
SCOTT: 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. 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. 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 and the...
GROSS: You mean from the previous film adaptation or from the book?
SCOTT: Yeah, the film adaptations and the - to sort of think, OK, well, what do I read when I read these scripts? The scripts were 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 character. Usually, in television, it's maybe a couple or a family or a hospital or a police department or whatever.
GROSS: Your eyes are so interesting in this series 'cause sometimes they're, you know, a little comical or - but sometimes they are - and sometimes they're kind of threatening, and other times they're just blank like there's nothing going on...
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Like they're...
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Dead and there's nothing going on behind them. And it strikes me that that must be hard to achieve since you're not dead inside (laughter), you know?
SCOTT: Yes. Yeah.
GROSS: You have a conscience. Can you talk a little bit about going into that, like, dead-inside blank state?
SCOTT: So it's not necessarily that you would be playing nothing. And I think what's interesting about Tom Ripley is that we - 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. 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, you know, consciously trying to conjure up, you know? And so I find that really interesting, the audience participation in performance. And I think some of the most interesting performances where they - 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.
GROSS: So you're playing Tom Ripley, somebody who's hiding his real identity and assuming the identity of others. So he's always hiding who he is. You must identify with that in a way as an actor 'cause you're always playing somebody else. But also, Patricia Highsmith, who wrote the novel that "Ripley" is adapted from, she was a lesbian and had to hide that because when she was writing, like, you couldn't be out. There's no way.
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: And you grew up in Dublin, and I think you were alive when homosexuality was against the law. So, like, she knew stuff about hiding. You knew stuff about hiding, you know, your identity. Or you knew people who probably had to hide their identity. So do you feel that sense of hiddenness in the portrayal?
SCOTT: Yeah, I do. I absolutely do. She's definitely talking about murky times in society, and a lot of the 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. There's something about this character that to me is quite elusive and possibly just secretive, even to himself, and then...
GROSS: Yeah, definitely. It seems like he's definitely secretive to himself.
SCOTT: 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 and 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. He certainly works as a con artist, and I think he's fluid. 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. 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. 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.
GROSS: The film is shot in black-and-white, and it's really exquisite. Like, every shot could be a beautiful still photograph if you just, you know, stopped it and look at the frame. And I'm wondering what it was like to shoot that way 'cause just setting up the lighting and the composition, it's so carefully and artfully done. So did that mean a lot of time waiting for you?
SCOTT: It absolutely did.
GROSS: Yeah.
SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah. It did. Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: And did you have to be aware of exactly how the lighting was so the shadows would be - would fall exactly right?
SCOTT: To a certain extent. I certainly knew that Steve Zaillian, our director, was very concerned with, you know, 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 character is, of course, that he's isolated. And, you know, we shot it towards the end of the pandemic. 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 and the process and probably in the performance to some degree.
BIANCULLI: Andrew Scott speaking to Terry Gross last year. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2024 interview with Andrew Scott. He's nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for his starring role in the Netflix series "Ripley." The awards ceremony will be televised live Sunday on Netflix.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: So you may be tired of talking about your role in "Fleabag" as a priest.
SCOTT: No, not at all.
GROSS: OK.
SCOTT: Not at all.
GROSS: As a priest torn between your commitment to the priesthood and your love for the main character, the woman nicknamed Fleabag, torn between your commitment to celibacy and your own sexual desire. And, you know, it stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also created and wrote it. And she plays a single woman who really loves sex and has had a lot of partners but isn't really in love until she meets you. And you're a priest who performs the ceremony for Fleabag's father's second marriage. She falls in love with you. You're drawn to her, but you're a priest. You become good friends, and she started to hope that you'll leave the priesthood and be with her.
And I want to play a scene in which she's visiting you at the parish in the evening. And the scene starts inside and then moves outside, so we just did a bit of editing to edit together those two parts of the scene. So let's hear that. Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Fleabag speaks first.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FLEABAG")
PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) So I read your book.
SCOTT: (As The Priest) OK, great.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) Well, it's got some great twists. But I just - I couldn't help but notice...
SCOTT: (As Priest) Come on. Just spit it out.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag)...Just one or two little inconsistencies.
SCOTT: (As Priest) OK, sure.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) So the world was made in seven days. And on the first day, light came. And then a few days later, the sun came.
SCOTT: (As Priest) Yeah. That's ridiculous.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) But you believe that?
SCOTT: (As Priest) 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.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) What's God's plan for you?
SCOTT: (As Priest) I believe God meant for me to love people in a different way. I believe I'm supposed to love people as a father.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) We can arrange that.
SCOTT: (As Priest) A father of many.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) I'll go up to three.
SCOTT: (As Priest) It's not going to happen.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) Two, then.
SCOTT: (As Priest) OK, two.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) Do you think I should become a Catholic?
SCOTT: (As Priest) 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.
WALLER-BRIDGE: (As Fleabag) And?
SCOTT: (As Priest) I've never felt closer to God.
GROSS: (Laughter) That's Phoebe Waller-Bridge and my guest, Andrew Scott. That's such a great role and such a great performance. Did you ever know a young priest as attractive as you were?
(LAUGHTER)
SCOTT: That's very kind and also impossible to answer. Yeah. No, I completely adore Phoebe and...
GROSS: Well, wait. Let's not avoid...
SCOTT: I'm very...
GROSS: ...The question here. We'll...
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Take out the comparison to you so you don't have to worry about being humble here. But did you ever know a young, very attractive priest?
SCOTT: No, no. The priests that I knew were not young or attractive.
GROSS: Right (Laughter). OK.
SCOTT: (Laughter).
GROSS: You were raised Catholic in Dublin. What was the role of the church in your life?
SCOTT: 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 is 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.
And there's also, of course, the, you know, the huge amount of corruption and abuse that happened when I was growing up in the '90s. I remember, you know, 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.
GROSS: Sexual abuse.
SCOTT: Sexual abuse. And not just sexual abuse but infidelity within marriages and - or marriages where people would be, you know, having affairs with priests and, you know, but mainly sexual abuse.
GROSS: Were you really angry with the church for having so many hypocrites in positions of religious power? You know, you talk about the priests who were accused of sexual abuse and, you know, infidelity and, you know, entering other people's marriages. And, you know, you're gay. I don't know how old you were when you realized that, maybe all your life. But like I said, in the Republic of Ireland, being gay was against the law until, I think, 1993. I think that's when it was...
SCOTT: Yes, 1993. Yeah.
GROSS: ...Repealed. And the church condemned it. And yet you have these priests, you know, abusing boys and having affairs with women and men, probably. So how did you fit all these complicated feelings into your character of the priest in "Fleabag"? And it's a comedic role, too...
SCOTT: Yeah, yeah.
GROSS: ...As we could hear from the scene that we played. And he's wrestling with the natural sexual desire that...
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: ...That people have.
SCOTT: And love. I think he falls in love.
GROSS: And love.
SCOTT: Yeah, yeah.
GROSS: Yeah. Physical expressions of love, too.
SCOTT: Yeah. 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 positions of power silence people who want to be able to talk about that. And so 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 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 faith. I think it's a wonderful thing to be able to have romantic feelings and to also have faith 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. To have a still space is something that would be wonderful for them if they were made to 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, that actually this is a person who really is struggling and is a human being.
GROSS: And I love the fact that he questions his faith...
SCOTT: Yes, yeah.
GROSS: ...But constantly stays with it.
SCOTT: Yes, exactly.
GROSS: And that it's OK to question it.
SCOTT: Absolutely.
GROSS: Like, if your belief is deep enough, it's OK to challenge it and question it...
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: ...And remain committed, so yeah.
SCOTT: Yes, exactly. Remain committed, exactly. To see that struggle, like in any relationship - in a marriage, you think, am I - 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 that - those crises that makes us honorable and courageous. And that's a wonderful thing to be able to convey and also, of course, to just address.
GROSS: Did any priests give you feedback on your role in "Fleabag"?
SCOTT: 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 - that they're not just these pious, flawless people. I think most of the feedback I got was really wonderful.
BIANCULLI: Andrew Scott speaking to Terry Gross last year. He's nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award for his starring role in the 2024 Netflix series "Ripley." The SAG awards are Sunday evening and will be presented live on Netflix. After a break, we'll hear more of their interview, and I'll review "Zero Day," a new Netflix series starring Robert De Niro. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JEFF RUSSO'S "THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY - FIN")
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. Let's get back to Terry's interview with Andrew Scott, who stars in the Netflix series "Ripley," an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel "The Talented Mr. Ripley." He's nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award for his role. Scott also co-starred in Season 2 of the comedy series "Fleabag" as a priest torn between his calling and his love for a woman. The role earned him the nickname, the hot priest. TV audiences also know him for the BBC series "Sherlock," in which he played Moriarty, opposite Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes. He's received awards for his performance onstage in the U.K. as Hamlet and for an adaptation of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya," a one-man show in which he played every role, male and female.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: I want to ask you about your recent film "All Of Us Strangers," in which you play a screenwriter in London living in a new high-rise building, and there's only one other unit that seems to have anyone living in it. So it's this shiny and eerily empty new building. The other resident, played by Paul Mescal, turns out to be gay, like your character, and you develop an intimate relationship. At the same time, you return to the town where you were raised, and the people who you meet there are your parents. But we, the audience, don't know that immediately 'cause they're the same age you are. Once we realize, wait; that's his parents, like, I was thinking, like, this is terrible casting. The parents are the same age as the son. What went wrong here?
But then you realize the parents were in a car accident when your character was 11 years old. And you've gone back, either in your mind or physically, to talking with them and trying to bridge the gap of the man you've become, the screenwriter, the man who is gay, with the child who they knew and all the things you couldn't tell them and couldn't talk about then and are just, like, dying to tell them now - you know, having the conversations you always wish you'd had had they been alive. Are your parents still alive?
SCOTT: My mother died three weeks ago.
GROSS: Oh, no. I'm so sorry.
SCOTT: Thank you.
GROSS: Are you OK?
SCOTT: I'm OK now. As we're speaking, yeah, I'm OK.
GROSS: Oh, I'm so sorry. I was going to ask you - and I'm not sure if this is anything you'd care to talk about, knowing now what I know - if you, as you were playing that, wanted to have conversations with your parents that you never had. And now I'm hoping that you had the conversations.
SCOTT: 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.
GROSS: Is your father still alive?
SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: And is he OK?
SCOTT: My father's OK.
GROSS: All right. One of the things about playing this role, it's one of the films in which you show your ability to be silent and still convey a lot. There's, I think, about - I timed it - there's about 14 minutes where the camera is, you know, mostly on you and on your face, or you're walking, and not - you don't say a word for, like, 14 minutes.
SCOTT: 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 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 the way - that's really representative, I think, of the way human beings behave.
GROSS: That's a really good point, yeah (laughter).
SCOTT: Yeah, it's sort of - that's what happens a lot. It's like - it's just the way we are.
GROSS: One of my favorite lines in the movie is actually said by Paul Mescal, who says, I was a fat kid, and when you're fat, people don't ask why...
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: ...You don't have a girlfriend. And I thought, like, oh, that gets you so much.
SCOTT: Yeah, yeah. It's brilliant. It's so truthful. The screenplay was so incredibly truthful. And I love the fact that it 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 because everybody has a relationship with their parents, whether they - 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. So - and I think most people have a relationship with falling in love. So I love the fact that that film, because it's sort of unusual, it's - there's a dreamlike quality to it - sort of is able to tap into huge swaths of different experiences. I think it's really special, that film.
BIANCULLI: Andrew Scott speaking to Terry Gross last year. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2024 interview with Andrew Scott. He's nominated for a Screen Actors Guild award for his starring role in the Netflix series "Ripley." The awards ceremony will be televised live Sunday on Netflix.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: I think you first became known in the U.S. in "Sherlock," the BBC series that played in the U.S. as well, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and you as his nemesis, Moriarty. So I want to play a scene from Season 1, and this is the first scene where Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty meet face-to-face. And Moriarty has lured Sherlock to rescue his friend Watson, who's been outfitted with an explosive vest. So Sherlock is pointing a gun at you during this entire exchange, and your character, Moriarty, speaks first.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SHERLOCK")
SCOTT: (As Jim Moriarty) Do you know what happens if you don't leave me alone, Sherlock, to you?
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: (As Sherlock Holmes) Oh, let me guess. I get killed.
SCOTT: (As Jim Moriarty) 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.
CUMBERBATCH: (As Sherlock Holmes) I have been reliably informed that I don't have one.
SCOTT: (As Jim Moriarty) But we both know that's not quite true. Well, I'd better be off. Well, it was so nice to have had a proper chat.
CUMBERBATCH: (As Sherlock Holmes) What if I was to shoot you now, right now?
SCOTT: (As Jim Moriarty) Then you could cherish the look of surprise on my face 'cause I'd be surprised, Sherlock - really, I would - and just a teensy bit disappointed. And, of course, you wouldn't be able to cherish it for very long. Ciao, Sherlock Holmes.
CUMBERBATCH: (As Sherlock Holmes) Catch you later.
SCOTT: (As Jim Moriarty) No, you won't.
GROSS: So...
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: You play Moriarty big and smirky, sinister and funny. What was your audition like?
SCOTT: 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 a - just an image, and it would say something like hello, Sherlock. And that would be the end of the series. But then when they realized that lots of actors coming in to 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 - Steven Moffat, the writer, quickly wrote that scene, which eventually appeared as the scene we've just listened to, as an audition scene for actors to read in the audition. And they sent it maybe - I don't know - like, 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, you know, boyish face and stuff. And so I took great, great pleasure in frightening them. And I knew in the audition that they were amused but also that they were scared.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Were you able to tap into a place in yourself that you thought could scare people?
SCOTT: 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 (laughter).
GROSS: Yeah, yeah. I want to move on to "Hamlet." You got an Olivier Award, I think - right? - for your portrayal. No?
SCOTT: I might have. Yeah.
GROSS: You might have. OK.
SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: How am I supposed to know if you don't know?
SCOTT: Yeah. Well, I don't know. How am I supposed to know if you don't know?
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Well, anyways, you were acclaimed.
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: OK, you were acclaimed.
SCOTT: People liked it. People liked it, yeah.
GROSS: Yeah. So you've spoken about how you wanted to make the language understandable 'cause so often, especially...
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: ...For Americans, who sometimes have to work hard just to grasp a British accent when spoken quickly or spoken with a regional British accent - and, of course, so much of the language is - so much of the language in Shakespeare is language that we no longer use. It's archaic. But you really wanted to make every word understandable. So I went on YouTube to see if I could find anything, and I found you doing part of the to be, or not to be soliloquy, which is, of course, the most famous part. And it was so interesting because, you know, Hamlet is really, like, thinking through, like, should I live, or should I end my life? I don't know. And what's the worst that can happen if I die? What would that be like?
SCOTT: Yeah.
GROSS: And, of course, he's using very elevated poetic language to say all of that, but you say it, like, really slowly. There are so many, like, long pauses in between, for instance, to be - long pause - or not to be. And on the one hand, I felt like, wow, that's a lot of pauses, and on the other hand, I felt like, well, every word is ringing out, and I'm kind of hearing things I hadn't heard before. So...
SCOTT: Right.
GROSS: ...Can you describe your thoughts about those pauses and why you took them and where you took them?
SCOTT: 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? 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.
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. And 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 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 ignore the famousness of the play. In fact, we had a thing in rehearsal called the famous play buzzer...
GROSS: (Laughter).
SCOTT: ...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 story. And we don't know - we should unlearn the fact that we don't know that that character could be in - that character, he only appears fleetingly. But we know that probably because we know the play so well, that actually, he just appears to him, and then he sort of - 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, 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, you know, a famous story.
So I found all that really interesting, 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. 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, a little bit like "Fleabag" then you - when you're dealing with comedy, you need to look for the soul, 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 lives, 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.
GROSS: Andrew Scott, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. And, you know, I - your face changes from role to role. Can you pass unrecognized on the street?
SCOTT: I can, yeah. Yeah, I can (laughter) sometimes.
GROSS: Right, sometimes. Yeah, do you use...
SCOTT: Depends on the day.
GROSS: ...Any kind of disguise or...
SCOTT: It depends. I'm very lucky. I can walk the streets pretty easily, you know?
GROSS: Yeah. We'll see how long that lasts.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: All right.
SCOTT: People have been saying that for a while, so...
GROSS: Yeah.
SCOTT: ...Hopefully, I'll be able to duck and dive into the future.
GROSS: Well, congratulations on "Ripley," and thank you so much for being with us.
SCOTT: Thank you so much for having me.
BIANCULLI: Andrew Scott speaking with Terry Gross last year. He's nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for his starring role in the Netflix series "Ripley," based on the bestselling Patricia Highsmith novel "The Talented Mr. Ripley." The SAG Awards take place Sunday night and will be streamed live on Netflix. Coming up, I review the new Netflix series "Zero Day," a political thriller starring Robert De Niro. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Robert De Niro has been a movie star for more than 50 years - and still is. But occasionally, very occasionally, he also pops up as an actor on television. For NBC, he was a guest star on one episode of "30 Rock" and appeared close to 10 times on "Saturday Night Live." For HBO, he starred in "The Wizard Of Lies," Barry Levinson's made-for-TV movie about Bernie Madoff. And two years ago, he appeared in and narrated a little-known five-episode Argentinian TV mini-series called "Nada," playing the American friend of a caustic Buenos Aires food critic.
Except for De Niro's contributions, "Nada" is subtitled. It's also very funny, delightful in its playful approach to both food and language and available to stream on Hulu. Thanks to Netflix, another entry has just been added to Robert De Niro's TV resume. He's starring in "Zero Day," a new six-part political thriller about a chilling cyber-terrorist attack on the United States. With no warning and no explanation, all the electronic and computerized systems in the country stopped working for precisely one minute, resulting in widespread havoc, unchecked panic and - during those 60 seconds - thousands of deaths. When systems are restored, everyone with a cell phone receives the same frightening text message - this will happen again.
That makes part of "Zero Day" a mystery, a thriller and a race against time, with the president of the United States forced to act quickly against an unknown, unseen enemy. But it's also a political drama with various factions inside Congress and in the media stoking panic or using the crisis to advance their own personal agendas. It deals with abuse of power, political overreach and questionable decisions, subjects that make "Zero Day" almost mind-blowingly topical. In this TV drama, after the cyberattack, there's a lot of anger and paranoia and finger-pointing and division.
And that's where De Niro comes in. He plays former President George Mullen, one of the last leaders popular on both sides of the political spectrum. His former chief of staff, played by the always impressive Jesse Plemons, visits Mullen right after the cyberattack. He urges him to make a public appearance at a New York City disaster site, where survivors may be trapped under the rubble, to help calm things down. An angry crowd, fed by conspiracy theories and blaming the current administration, is pushing against police barricades when the former president arrives and spontaneously addresses the crowd. TV cameras already are there, and Mullen's impromptu remarks are shown relayed on live TV throughout the nation as a rare and welcome voice of reason.
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ROBERT DE NIRO: (As George Mullen) Hey. Hey. Please. What's the matter with you? This is exactly what they want us to do.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Who's they, Mullen? You don't even know who they are.
DE NIRO: (As George Mullen) You're right. I don't know who they are. Neither do you. None of us do. But if we keep shouting at each other like this, what are we going to accomplish? We're Americans. What are we doing? We're supposed to be standing up for each other. We're supposed to be helping each other. What, you think you're doing the right thing? No, you're not. You're afraid. And you think if you get worked up over some conspiracy nonsense that that won't make you afraid? No. You're not behaving like an American nor a patriot. You're here standing up for the little guy? The working man?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Someone has to.
DE NIRO: (As George Mullen) Well, there are working men and women buried right beneath our feet right here. You don't trust the government? I get that. It hasn't always come through for everybody, but this isn't about the government or the 1% or whatever the hell you want to call them. It's about somebody out there that hates us and stands against everything that we stand for, everything that makes us who we are. And they found a way to hurt us. It's that simple. And right now these people need to get back to work and get those people out, and you need to let them. You want to stand by and offer your support and your prayers? That's great, but please just do it from behind the barricade.
BIANCULLI: Because of that performance, Mullen is summoned immediately to the Oval Office by the current president, played by Angela Bassett. He doesn't know it, but she's about to appoint him to head a very powerful, potentially unconstitutional task force.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ZERO DAY")
ANGELA BASSETT: (As Evelyn Mitchell) Usually, a zero-day vulnerability exists on a single operating system - your iPhone, say. But this thing exploited unknown vulnerabilities across dozens of systems. It shut those systems off for exactly one minute and then turned everything back on again.
DE NIRO: (As George Mullen) So that wasn't us?
BASSETT: (As Evelyn Mitchell) No. We had barely gotten our people into it when everything came back on line.
DE NIRO: (As George Mullen) There was no ransom demand? Nobody claimed responsibility? Nothing like that?
BASSETT: (As Evelyn Mitchell) Just that insidious threat. We're running shifts at Meade, trying to sort through a digital trail that is basically the Gordian knot.
DE NIRO: (As George Mullen) So what's the plan?
BASSETT: (As Evelyn Mitchell) Congress is authorizing a special investigatory commission and endowing it with extraordinary powers commensurate with the scale of this emergency. They will be granting this commission powers of surveillance, powers of search and seizure. If necessary, even the suspension of habeas corpus.
DE NIRO: (As George Mullen) Jesus, Evelyn. We didn't even do that after 9/11.
BASSETT: (As Evelyn Mitchell) This is different. We knew who did it then. We have no clue here and no time to spare. We need an entity with all the powers of every law enforcement and intelligence agency put together operating on American soil.
DE NIRO: (As George Mullen) You're just going to grab people off the streets without warrants?
BASSETT: (As Evelyn Mitchell) Actually, you are.
BIANCULLI: The supporting players in "Zero Day," in addition to Plemons and Bassett, include other top-tier actors - Joan Allen, Connie Britton, Lizzy Caplan, Matthew Modine, Dan Stevens, Bill Camp. All of them are actors I've raved about in the past, and they all contribute strongly to this mini-series. And while "Zero Day" is a work of fiction, it's structured to make it easy to draw parallels to real-life events and figures. There's a right-wing media figure stirring up trouble, an elderly politician whose mental faculties may be slipping, Russian operatives and Silicon Valley billionaires in the shadows, and so on.
And on "Zero Day," the scripted events of this TV mini-series are relayed by actual newspeople portraying themselves, including Wolf Blitzer, Savannah Guthrie and Nicolle Wallace. Behind the scenes, the creators and co-writers of "Zero Day" include Wallace's husband, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt, and Noah Oppenheim, former president of NBC News. Their narrative, also written with Eric Newman of the TV series "Narcos," builds nicely and with very little predictability.
One element missing is humor - there's hardly a drop of it in the entire show. But the story escalates dramatically, like such recent TV political thrillers as "The Agency" and "The Diplomat." And all six episodes of "Zero Day" are directed by Lesli Linka Glatter who worked on both "Homeland" and "Mad Men." She uses images in a way that conjures their own sense of mystery and adds to the intensity of "Zero Day," as do all the actors from De Niro on down. So add Netflix's "Zero Day" to your streaming list, and while you're at it, add Hulu's "Nada." Two very different De Niro performances but two very good television programs.
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BIANCULLI: One quick production note. On last week's show, when we saluted the 50th anniversary of "Saturday Night Live," I made a mistake in my introduction. I said that the show's producer, Lorne Michaels, had offered comedian George Carlin the chance to be permanent host of the show, but he suggested a rotating host approach instead and hosted only the premiere episode. It was the right story but the wrong comedian. Lorne Michaels actually had made that offer to another comic who appeared on that first show - Albert Brooks. It was Brooks who suggested the rotating hosts, and it was I who misremembered it and made the mistake. I apologize for the error.
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BIANCULLI: On Monday's show, the Catholic Church has been described as the world's last true monarchy, with enormous power concentrated in the Vatican. Philip Shenon talks about the last seven popes and how efforts to reform the Church with the Second Vatican Council led to decadeslong doctrinal debates and power struggles. Shenon's book is "Jesus Wept." Join us.
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BIANCULLI: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram - @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Briger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Diana Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper.
For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.
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Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.