ANDREW SCOTT From Fleabag’s Sexy Priest to Black Mirror’s Sexy Uber Driver.
Black Mirror may be Andrew Scott’s new calling but after playing that emotionally conflicted Sexy Priest he’ll always be…
ANDREW SCOTT IS having a good time. While some actors find it difficult or tiresome to have to talk about the roles they’ve played, the shows they’ve acted in, or the process they go through, Scott positively revels in it all. That’s partly due to his innately garrulous nature. “I like people,” he explains, over coffee in a London restaurant by the Thames. “So I’m happy to stop and talk to people I meet on the street. For the most part.” Perhaps more importantly, he’s on a run of extraordinary TV roles, following his giddy, fun-loving psycho Moriarty in Sherlock, with the dazzlingly charismatic Sexy Priest in Fleabag Season 2, of which he’s massively proud. And now he’s in ‘Smithereens’, one of three new Black Mirror stories, playing a driver working for an Uber-style ride service. It’s a part which gives Scott a lot of opportunities for major emoting, often shot in huge close-up. And he had a good time doing that, too…
When you’re offered a Black Mirror episode do you immediately think, “Fuck yes!”?
It always depends on the story and the part but then I read this story and I did indeed think, “Fuck yes, I need to do this”. It’s super-cool… and quite different for Black Mirror in that the concept isn’t completely out there; it’s very human and it’s a story that could absolutely take place today.
You’re mostly confined to your car throughout the episode, so does that affect the performance?
Yes, it does actually. Because you have to try and make that cinematic, and make sure all those scenes don’t bleed into one. There’s this relationship that’s going on in the car which alters as it goes on, so we had to really strongly map that, not just in the decisions about where they put the camera but also in what I’m doing. You have to think about what you reveal in every scene. So it was very focused, and I got some great stuff to do.
You have some big, juicy moments. Do you particularly enjoy those scenes?
Oh yeah, definitely. There’s one particular scene when my character freaks out, and I nearly fainted after finishing it. Charlie [Brooker] is very well known for his creative imagination but his line-for-line dialogue is great, too; it’s very sensitive and there’s real heart in this story. Sherlock, Fleabag and the Black Mirror episode share a certain heightened, dramatic style. Do you go out of your way to find this kind of writing? I’m obsessed with it, yes. I think it’s to do with having started in the theatre where the writing has to have some degree of proper authorship, and what sometimes happens in TV is that the concept can be interesting but the dialogue is full of just ‘TV speak’. So I like those writers where you you immediately get a sense that they have a unique voice.
And writing doesn’t come much more distinctive than Phoebe Waller-bridge, does it?
Yeah – her writing is funny and moving and is also kind of philosophical at the same time, which is extraordinary. The whole [Fleabag] thing has been a total thrill and it’s just come out in America and it’s gone down a storm there as well.
What was it like filming those moments when your Sexy Priest character notices Fleabag breaking the fourth wall?
Oh, it was so much fun. We talked a lot about how that might work. We rehearsed it a lot with iphones filming us close up – to see if it might be too much, or too invasive and how those moments might develop. In one episode he looks slightly aware and then he kind of looks at the camera himself and gets pissed off, and some people said they actually got a fright at that moment.
Yes, that sent a shiver down the nation’s spines…
[Laughs] I just love that idea, and I think the reason [that moment] really works in Fleabag is that it means something else: it means that he really sees her and something you suspect about them – which is that they’re in love with each other – is sort of confirmed by the fact that he can really see her, so it has a spiritual element to it. He’s the only one who notices what she’s doing. And that’s the nature of romantic love in a sense – two people who are able to see each other in a way that others don’t… it was exciting to represent that.
What did you make of those who felt your priest was being borderline abusive to Fleabag?
Well, first of all it’s good that there was a conversation going on, but Phoebe and I absolutely talked about them being equals, and I think you’ve got to look at the character of Fleabag, who’s got so much authority and she doesn’t believe in his position, so it’s difficult for him to abuse a position that she doesn’t believe in. Also, she has agency in that situation, and he’s a flawed character, as she is. He’s deeply conflicted and he’s deeply in love with her, and he doesn’t behave perfectly. I think to speak in extreme terms like that – of victim and abuser, or powerless and all-powerful – about the characters does break down and destroy the nuance. Phoebe’s great gift is that she has empathy for all the characters.
What did you make of others saying they were alienated by her ‘poshness’?
It speaks to me about empathy – the purpose of drama and art is to try to imagine what it must be like to be someone else; and if we start getting to the point where we’re only allowed to operate in these narrow fields of our own experience and sort of stay in your box. Well, I think there’s a kind of politically correct woke-ism about that, which I find not just nauseating but kind of troubling. All I know is that we need her, and her authentic voice.
“THEY WERE IN LOVE. HE’S THE ONLY ONE WHO NOTICES WHAT SHE’S DOING”
BLACK MIRROR SEASON 5 IS ON NETFLIX NOW