Andrew Scott: Tom Ripley is ‘vulnerable, awkward, flirtatious and murderous’

Ripley was released today, April 4, and Scott stars alongside Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf. Steven Zaillian directed and wrote the Netflix special.

The Dubliner, who recently starred in All of us Strangers with Paul Mescal, has taken on 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.

Tom's acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud, and murder. The limited series drama is based on Patricia Highsmith’s bestselling Tom Ripley novels.

“There's moments in the story where he's just incredibly vulnerable and trying to fit in and he's awkward,” Andrew said.

“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.

“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 Eliot 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.”

Scott was enticed to play Tom Ripley because there was a lot of time spent on one solitary character.

“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.

“There really isn't any other plot line apart from what's going on from Tom's point of view. So that's number one, quite intimidating. But number two, it allows you to really get into his mind so things that may have, in a more conventional setup, taken five minutes, you're stretching out, so you really get an insight into this very famous character.

“I've noticed since I've been associated with the role, people say, “Oh my god that character?” People have a lot of preconceptions about Tom Ripley. So, it's my job, I suppose in some ways to ignore all that and try to create our own particular version of it”.

According to the Fleabag star, he believes that we don't really know Tom's backstory or if we know it, we don't necessarily trust it.

“To me, what it should feel like is what it's like to be Tom Ripley rather than what it's like to be a victim of Tom Ripley.

“He's a dark character and does bad things, but, to me, what it’s about is feeling like you are not invited to the party.

“I think he's very charming and not in a manipulative way. I think he's somebody who loves life and when he comes to Italy and he's exposed to all this beautiful art and landscape and beauty and food, he adores it.

“But the people that he's with, I'm not sure, have the same appreciation or humility about that stuff that he does. So, in a way, he's very like us. He's an enthusiast. He's also a murderer. But I don’t think he’s a natural born killer.

“He's able to understand human nature and that's a very good quality, actually. I feel like he's nice and good to people and the terrible things that he does, he does out of necessity.

“What we're attempting to create is a story that, to my mind, is like all stories, it's about humanity and to understand that, how you're seen is not necessarily how you are.

“It's about kindness and it's about casual cruelty, which to me is the opposite of kindness. It's about how you mistreat somebody culturally or if you hold somebody down that bad things can happen. It’s about how any human being has both ends: You can do terrible things and want to do good things. I think that's why Tom Ripley is so fascinating. I love Tom,” Scott said.

“I think in drama there's a great mistake, which is that a character has to be accessible, reachable, or nice.

“I always think the great works of art are, or should be, about who we are and not who we should be.

“To choose to point the camera at this person to whom the camera never points, that's the exciting nature of it. That we’re looking at somebody who isn't really observed by very many people at all. But in our story, that's who we look at,” Scott said.