Andrew Scott has opened up about the biggest challenge he faced while playing the fictional serial killer Tom Ripley in the new Netflix adaptation.
The Fleabag actor, 47, is making his small screen return in the fresh take on Patricia Highsmith’s enduringly popular 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley – a role previously played by Matt Damon and John Malkovich.
Set in the 1960s, Ripley is hired by a wealthy New Yorker to travel to Italy to convince his wayward son Dickie (played by Johnny Flynn) to return home. Ripley lies his way into the lavish world of the elite before resorting to deceit and murder in a desperate attempt to keep his place at the table.
What makes the tale by Highsmith so unique is that Ripley is the novel’s protagonist, Scott said, despite being a serial killer, and encourages readers to see his humanity.
‘The challenge of it was ‘How do you make the audience feel what it’s like to be Tom Ripley, rather that where we might usually go, which is to feel like to be a victim of Tom Ripley’,’ Scott said.
Andrew Scott opened up about the biggest challenge he faced while playing fictional serial killer Tom Ripley for the new Netflix adaptation
The Fleabag actor is making his small screen return in the long-awaited series, based on Patricia Highsmith’s enduringly popular 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley
While promoting the series, Scott said what makes Highsmith ‘one of the great crime writers’ is that you are sometimes ‘willing’ for Tom to get away with his crimes, rather than simply seeing him as a villain.
He said: ‘He’s the protagonist he’s not the antagonist, so it asks us to look at what’s dark within ourselves.’
Scott went onto say that humans choose to categorise the perpetrators as ‘monsters’ in order to ‘make ourselves feel safer’.
‘Actually all these things are perpetrated by human beings and we have to be able to in some ways accept the very terrifying nature that people can make mistakes and be bad and inept and innocent and yet still do these terrible things,’ he added.
‘And I think that’s what is so sort of unsettling about the character. So he’s actually a deeply human character, but maybe not one that we choose to want to look at too much.’
Oscar-winning screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) wrote and directed the latest adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, following in the footsteps of the 1999 movie which starred Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow.
With a noir take, in comparison to the sumptuous visuals of the Hollywood movie, critics have compared the Netflix version to Hitchcock in style and pace.
Malkovich, who previously played the title role in 2002 movie Ripley’s Game, returns to the world of Tom Ripley in a wildly different part while the star-studded cast also includes Dakota Fanning who portrays Marge Sherwood, an American living in Italy who starts to suspect Tom’s motives.
What makes the tale by Highsmith so unique is that Ripley is the novel’s protagonist, Scott said, despite being a serial killer, and encourages readers to see his humanity
The eight-part show’s leading man has been commended for his portrayal of the duplicitous titular con-man
While praise has been given to Scott, some reviewers felt the supporting cast came up short with Evening Standard’s Anna Van Praagh deciding that Dakota Fanning ‘can’t compete for a second with Gwyneth’s Paltrow’s flawless Marge Sherwood, and Johnny Flynn is left dead on the side of the road compared to Jude Law’s portrayal of Dickie Greenleaf, a character he inhabited perfectly.’
Zaillian’s visuals though have left the critics awe-struck with Carol Midgely of The Times noting that ‘it is so cinematic that it feels less like a TV series and more like a very long film,’ declaring it as ‘a completely hypnotic experience.’
The Daily Mail’s Christopher Stephens writes: ‘This isn’t just television, it’s a homage to great 1940s directors such as Carol Reed or Alfred Hitchcock.’
Meanwhile Scott’s central performance has captivated early viewers, with the Irish actor labelled ‘spellbinding’.
Lucy Mangan for The Guardian writes in her five star review that ‘Scott’s Tom is everything and nothing, and mesmeric either way,’ adding: ‘There is magic at work here.’
But The Independent’s Adam White is insistent that Scott, who also serves as executive producer, ‘feels all wrong for this’ and is comparable to an EastEnders baddie, looking ‘more like a lost Mitchell brother than a high society interloper.’
The star-studded cast also includes Dakota Fanning who portrays Marge Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie
Andrew Scott’s central performance has captivated early viewers, with the Irish actor labelled ‘spellbinding’
Fans have also applauded Scott’s performance, as taking to X, formerly, Twitter, on Wednesday evening, mesmerised viewers wrote: ‘Ok so I’ve already done two hours work and I’m having a big cuppa tea and watching the first episode of Ripley on Netflix and I’m here to tell you that it and Andrew Scott are both astonishingly beautiful & strange & deeply unsettling & you should watch it;
‘Ripley series is on Netflix today. Slow-burner but intriguing… Scott is superb’;
‘A New Netflix Series Makes Andrew Scott the Definitive Tom Ripley’;
‘Saltburn? Netflix said I present to you Ripley. We love a scammer!’
Scott has called Ripley ‘a heavy part to play,’ telling Vanity Fair that he ‘found it mentally and physically really hard. That’s just the truth of it’.
‘I feel like you’re required to love and advocate for your characters, and your job is to go, ‘Why? What’s that?’ You don’t play the opinions, the previous attitudes that people might have about Tom Ripley.
‘You have to throw all those out, try not to listen to them, and go, “Okay, well, I have to have the courage to create our own version and my own understanding of the character.”‘
