Scott’s pandemic from the depths
Dougray Scott’s new Irishset horror film has made him yearn for Scottish independence, he tells Aine O’Connor W
HEN Irish director Neasa Hardiman was writing her film Sea Fever, she cannot have known how prescient it would be. The sci-fi horror is set on a trawler that has an encounter with a deep-sea creature, which leaves its crew battling an unknown infection and debating quarantine. Dougray Scott plays the ship’s captain, Gerard, and like every conversation at the moment, ours begins with lockdown.
He’s in his home in London in week five of lockdown following his return from Vancouver. He says it makes him want to do things just because he can’t do them. I say I have never spent so much time with my kids. “I know, me neither. Or my wife!” he adds with a laugh.
He has 22-year-old twins — a son Gabriel and a daughter Eden — from his first marriage and a five-year-old son, Milo, with his wife of 13 years, actress Clare Forlani. He cycles for exercise and has seen his twins from a safe distance.
“People by and large are dealing with it very well, but it is all very bizarre, like living in a movie,” he says.
Coincidentally, his latest movie is thematically relevant. “It has got a lot of parallels — obviously isolation and quarantine but also the ecosystem in general and about how connected we are to it and how everything that we do has an effect upon the world at large.”
Scott was born in November 1965 in Fife, Scotland. He was the youngest of four, and although he has said his mother’s family did not approve of his father — she was a 20-year-old nurse when she got pregnant and had to marry his then 35-year-old father — he adored his dad.
He says they were quite a poor family in a tough area; he told The Guardian in 2018 that his mother always seemed glamorous because she had “a posh Kelvindale accent and used to wear white gloves. By contrast, my greataunts in Glasgow would put their cigarettes out by stubbing them on their hands. They had no ashtrays down in Glasgow. They were that tough.”
Scott was hotly tipped to be the next Bond after Pierce Brosnan, but it went to Daniel Craig. He was also down to the final two to play Wolverine in the X-Men franchise — but the timing was off: he had been hand-picked by Tom Cruise to play the baddie in Mission: Impossible 2 and the shoots coincided. Scott felt he could do both; Cruise felt he couldn’t.
However, if those chances escaped, he has had a steady career in film and TV, from Desperate Housewives to Batwoman. He has starred in both blockbusters and small indie films and shot in locations all across the world.
He says Sea Fever encompassed two of his favourite things: a small production and Ireland.
“I love filming in Ireland, I love that country, your country.” Sure they all say that, but he speaks knowledgeably of the country and his west of Ireland accent is not bad at all — he credits dialect coach Brendan Dunn.
Regarding independent production, Scott says he thinks most actors would agree with his preference for smaller movies: “You are kind of left to your own devices and in terms of your working relationship with the director and the writer and the other actors, you’re less interfered with than when you’re working on a huge blockbuster.”
He thinks that the pandemic will inevitably bring change to the movie industry. “In terms of how you show a movie, maybe more people will think about doing it digitally as opposed to taking the risk of putting it in a cinema. But TV is not the same as the cinema. The experience of watching something like The Irishman or Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen is just not the same as a computer screen.”
Sea Fever was shot largely in studio but there was also a week at sea. Scott had been on boats before but the experience made him reflect on fishing for a living.
“The whole industry of commercial fishing is precarious and dangerous and they take their lives in their hands when they go out.”
Scott chats easily and openly; he doesn’t have a publicist and is not afraid to share his opinions. The fishing gets him on to Brexit, which he feels contributed to the UK not dealing with the pandemic as well as EU countries did, and Scottish independence.
“I identify as being Scottish, I don’t identify with being British. I think that this is a great case for Scotland to push for independence. I think economically it is going to be a challenge, but it was a challenge for Ireland when Ireland became independent — it’s a challenge for anyone — but in the long run I think Scotland would be better off on their own.
“I’m not anti-English in any way shape or form — I live in London — but I just genuinely think that we’d be better off, breaking away and going away on our own.”
He also talks about the economic aftermath of the pandemic. “I don’t think you can look at the debt that is going to be incurred after this pandemic like normal government borrowing. And now more than ever the idea that these huge multinational companies can get away with paying the tax that they do is disgraceful. The way that governments handle these big companies has to change.”
Regarding the future he says he’s uncertain, torn between hope and cynicism. However, he is adamant about one thing: “Oh for sure, if there is anyone who can survive and come out the other side it will be the Irish.”