Andrew’s Italian
ACTOR Andrew Scott said he ‘loved’ working with co-star Dakota Fanning and the ‘extraordinary Italian crew’ on the new series Ripley, for which he even had to have Italian lessons.
The Golden Globe nominated actor also spoke of how ‘hard’ it was to film the Netflix series considering ‘so much time’ was spent with just his character, and how he could not have done it without the support of the crew.
Scott stars alongside Dakota as Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf in Ripley. Steven Zaillian directed and wrote the Netflix special.
The three stars immersed themselves in the Italian setting, moving between Amalfi and Capri, playing cards and enjoying the food. Flynn said the trio were ‘living like exiles for the whole time we were making the show’.
He added: ‘I had to learn Italian for some scenes. Andrew, Dakota, and I all had Italian lessons with the same teacher who we all loved, so that was fun. We hung out with her a lot. For me, it was an amazing thing to be with those guys. We had a lot of fun together. We enjoyed the food and we were in the most beautiful places on earth.’
Dubliner Scott, who recently starred in All Of Us Strangers with Paul Mescal, has won widespread acclaim for his interpretaton of the role of Tom Ripley, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, who is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son to return home. Scott said: ‘I’m not sure I can think of a television character where we’ve spent so much time with only them, so that’s hard. Coming from the theatre, and I love the vibes with the other actors so, I loved when Dakota and Johnny and everyone was there.
‘We had this extraordinary Italian crew who were wonderful. I genuinely couldn’t do it without their support and the fun because it’s dark and to me, you’ve got to have some playfulness.’
‘There are moments in the story where he’s just incredibly vulnerable and trying to fit in and he’s awkward. Then there are other moments where he’s very streetwise, and there are moments when he’s quite flirtatious, and then he’s murderous and then moments when he’s regretful.
‘It’s an incredibly human character and it has been an enormous challenge because of the stamina that it’s taken.’
Scott said he made his mind up to play Tom Ripley after reading the script on a plane.
He added: ‘What’s interesting about this version of Tom is, I don’t think we’ve ever had as much access to a character as we do in this.
‘I read the scripts on a plane, eight and a half hours of television, which is actually quite a rare thing to do.
‘What struck me immediately was that we spent a huge amount of time with just this one very solitary character. So just the sheer access we get to this person’s mind is extraordinary.’