Andrew Scott, the Irish actor known for playing the priest in 'Fleabag,' discussed his new film 'Elsinore' and his personal history of coming out publicly during an appearance on The Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast.
In 'Elsinore,' directed by Simon Stone and recently premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, Scott portrays Ian Charleson, the actor best known for 'Chariots of Fire,' during the final period of his life. Charleson, who was diagnosed with AIDS, refused to abandon a role playing Hamlet at the National Theatre. Scott both stars in and produced the film, which Focus Features will release on November 20. Reaction to his performance has been strong enough to spark talk that Scott could become the first out gay person to win an acting Oscar.
Reflecting on Charleson and the actors who came before him, Scott said: "Nobody wants to be rewarded or awarded for anything other than their work — you don't want to be a token — but Ian and his predecessors weren't invited to do the work. They were unable to contribute [more] to an industry that they could have been very useful in, and they could have had the facility to do, and that must have been so painful and difficult to have to choose between one thing or the other. And I thought when I was starting out that that was my fate too, but bit by bit, for whatever reason, that's turned out not to be the case."
The 49-year-old also traced his own path to coming out publicly, which he had already done privately before addressing it more openly in a 2013 interview tied to the project 'Legacy,' in which he played a Russian spy. He described using that interview — where he mentioned switching from watching Vladimir Putin videos to Rudolf Nureyev videos after Putin introduced anti-gay legislation — as a deliberate way to address the subject without a formal announcement, following his pride in having made the film 'Pride.' He said the disclosure, which appeared in some gay press at the time, produced "no fallout whatsoever," and that his career subsequently improved. "I always say that it was incredibly good because after that — I don't know if these things are related in any way, but after that, things really started to go really well career-wise for me, for the things that I wanted," he said.
Scott, who began acting as a child, has worked for more than 30 years, including a brief role in 'Saving Private Ryan.' He is known for playing Moriarty in 'Sherlock,' the priest in 'Fleabag,' Bond villain 'C' in 'Spectre,' a gay man reconnecting with his deceased parents in 'All of Us Strangers,' and the title character in the limited series 'Ripley.'
On playing 'C' in 'Spectre,' Scott said he felt intimidated by the scale of the Bond franchise and did not push his ideas as much as he might have. "I think the most important thing that you should have on a set is a level of comfort that you're able to say, 'What about this and what about that?'" he said, adding that he worked alongside Ben Whishaw, Ralph Fiennes and Daniel Craig, and learned from Sam Mendes that "it doesn't matter what the budget of the movie is, what the audience want to see is aliveness and daring and flair."
Scott also discussed the period after 'Fleabag's' acclaimed awards season in January through March, which was followed almost immediately by the COVID-19 shutdown. "It made me appreciate how much I love what I do," he said, describing the shift from the busiest period of his career to its quietest as "jarring," but one that gave him time to regroup.
Looking ahead, Scott expressed hope that recognition for performances like his will eventually become less remarkable. "In some ways, I hope it becomes less of a special thing for actors in the future … I'm an optimist … The war is never over, but we're moving towards what I believe is a very positive place," he said.
Photo: TKA201, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
