Andrew Scott Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

Somebody actually asked me to tattoo,

It'll pass on their face, which I declined.

[upbeat music]

[Andrew] Fleabag.

I played the priest in Fleabag,

and then he became known as the hot priest.

None of us ever on set ever called the priest

the sexy priest or the hot priest or anything like that.

But the internet became obsessed

with calling it that.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and I had worked together in a theater

maybe 10 years before we'd done Fleabag.

I've always wanted to do a little bit of romantic comedy,

so to speak, so she saw something in me,

and we created that character a little bit together.

I love you.

It'll pass.

[Andrew] I adore Phoebe.

Phoebe is one of my best friends,

and I think she's a great genius.

People talk a lot about backstory for characters.

Actually, I'm not sure

that that's as necessary as people might imagine.

You can really relate to people that you've met on the tube,

and you're interested in them,

even though you don't know anything about them.

And so, no, I didn't create a name for him,

and we just really focused on this enormous connection

and chemistry that these two characters had.

And it just shows

you don't really need to have a huge amount of information

in order to establish a deep connection

between two real people,

or even two fictionalized characters.

Where is the priest now? He's probably still with God.

God love him. I don't know if he's still on the booze.

Yeah, that's kind of sad, isn't it?

Maybe they'll meet again.

[upbeat music]

1917.

I worked with Sam in the theater,

so it was a very sort of theatrical idea

to just do a scene without any cutting.

There's no edits in that.

In the theater, you act for two hours without stopping.

If you stopped in the audience, people would be think,

That's a bit of a strange thing to do. Just keep going.

There were explosions and stuff going off,

so if I messed up a line,

it meant that they had to reprogram everything

two miles down the road, which unfortunately I made them do

because I messed up.

Look out for the bowing chap.

There's a small break just beside him.

The German line is 150 odd yards after that.

Watch out for the craters. They're deeper than they look.

You fall in, there's no getting out.

[Andrew] Sam said a brilliant thing,

which is to relieve yourself

of the pressure to try and get it in three takes,

which you might do in a normal film.

So, I did it.

We had about 30 takes just so you were really, really fluent

with the language.

Usually, you feel like, Oh well, we've got most of it,

but we can pick that part up

from where you made that last mistake,

and we can go from there.

But in this, if you made a mistake in minute seven

of an eight minute scene,

you have to go right back to the beginning.

So I love all that sort of experimental type of filming.

I like the idea that experimental filmmaking

isn't just a reserve for low budget stuff.

It was a big old movie, that.

And I liked the fact

that there was still a sort of courageousness

about the filmmaking process.

But that's Sam. He's a theater man.

Settle a bet. What day is it?

[Man] Friday. Friday.

Well, well, well. None of us was right.

This idiot thought it was Tuesday.

[Andrew] I think it's important to just have a wit

in those scenarios.

In drama when we're doing very bleak subjects,

I think there's an attempt to have no lightness in it,

and that's not the way human beings work.

Most of the time, we're looking for the light,

when we're in the darkness.

So he thought he was kind of sarcastic character.

I liked that about him.

Cynical probably, and probably has seen an awful lot

of terrible, terrible things.

[upbeat music]

Sherlock.

I was not overly familiar with Sherlock Holmes.

So I think that helped.

I didn't really think too much about previous incarnations.

In a way, I was kind of naive about Moriarty,

and what's required of somebody

who might be be asked to play that part.

I just wanted to have fun.

It was written in a really playful way.

He's not frightened.

Everybody else is scared,

but he's having the time of his life.

I think he's quite relaxed about destroying the world.

Kill you? No, don't be obvious.

I mean, I'm gonna kill you anyway, someday.

I don't wanna rush it though.

I'm saving it up for something special. No, no, no, no, no.

If you don't stop prying, I'll burn you.

I'll burn the heart out of you.

[Andrew] The challenge for me in that character

was to try and hold onto his power.

I remember good few times,

asking Mark and Steven, who are the brilliant writers

on Sherlock, for him not to say too much,

or to say less,

which they were always in total agreement about,

just that if you had an amazing bullseye line

to sort of cut around all the other lines.

I think that helps with the building of the mythology

of those kind of iconic characters,

that you don't waste them.

You don't have them in the background.

When you see them, you get a lot of bang for your buck.

Benedict created this incredible hero,

and so my job is to match him

and to not be intimidated by that character.

And I think there's a kind of laconicness

to him not being overly fussed

about what Sherlock might have thought of him,

even though of course he was completely obsessed by him.

It was very much about the dynamic

between Benedict and I think, we just had loads of fun.

How are you gonna do it?

Burn me?

[Moriarty] Ah, that's the problem.

Final problem. Have you worked out what it is yet?

[dark music]

What's the final problem?

I did tell you, but did you listen?

[Andrew] I love the idea

that we don't necessarily look like the characters.

It's what's within you. How your spirit is.

That is the most important thing.

So I always say to young actors,

just because you don't look like a character

doesn't mean that you can't embody the character.

That's not the most important thing.

[upbeat music]

Black Mirror.

Well, the challenge of that was, it was all set in a car.

I think it was maybe a month, three weeks or a month,

in really, really hot summer weather.

And how do you make all the scenes not exactly the same?

How do you build the tension?

It did a lot of work in Black Mirror

to change the angles of the shots,

so visually it looks slightly different.

Airport. Yeah?

Terminal three.

Do you work in that place?

Smithereen? Yeah.

[Andrew] The best characters

are where you go on as far journey as possible.

So if you start at A, you have to try and get to Z.

If you start going from A and you just end up at F,

you wanna be like, how much of the final letters

of the alphabet do you not show at the beginning?

X, Y, and Z? Don't show them.

[Christopher] Modern fucking companies,

everyone looks so fucking young.

How is anybody looking at him supposed to have

a sense of the fucking hierarchy?

Jesus Christ.

[Andrew] The script is so expert at that.

And so, that's what my job was like.

You think, Well, what's going on here?

And because I think there's a message at the bottom of it,

which is just like, Look up from your screen.

You might see what's actually happening in the world.

Little notification things

saying someone liked the comment that I made

on photo of theirs.

I just glanced it.

That's all the time it took.

At some point we're gonna have to put

some sort of cap on the complete lawlessness

of the cruelty that is allowed to go on, on the internet.

I just feel like it's got to be regulated in some way.

And I like the fact that there's a brilliant drama

that is able to explore that.

Some people I think don't even know

that Black Mirror means the small black mirror

that we have in our pockets.

There you go. In case you didn't know.

[Crew] You know what's your Uber score?

My Uber score? That's a really good question.

Oh, 4.7? Four out of five.

[Crew] Yeah. That's pretty damn good,

I think.

[upbeat music]

All Of Us Strangers.

Adam is a screenwriter

who is trying to write a story about his parents,

who had been killed in a car accident.

It's quite a surreal story

and it explores a lot of things.

Grief, love, loss, loneliness.

Andrew Haigh, the director,

we shot the film in his family home that he grew up in.

I think a lot of the time there's a myth

that you have to really go away from yourself

in order to authentically play somebody else.

But sometimes, the more I act,

the more I think it's actually just bringing

as much of yourself to a project as possible.

And so, I do definitely feel

like I brought my own thorny feelings

or uncomfortable feelings or vulnerable feelings

to the role.

I tried in some ways just not to act in some ways,

which sometimes is the biggest challenge actually,

is just how do you completely strip yourself

of all the stuff that is fake?

[Adam] They died just before I was 12.

I'm trying to write about them at the moment.

[Harry] How's it going?

[Adam] Strangely.

Hi.

Hi.

It was a very, very moving experience

and I think it's having a real effect

on loads of different kind of audiences,

whether that's young queer audiences,

or people who have lost parents,

or people who just feel lonely,

or people who just appreciate

how fragile and tender life is,

and how short a time we're here for.

With Paul, we just have chemistry.

I just love him as a person.

We both really loved our own parts.

There's a lot of physicality in the story.

That actually in some ways comes secondary

to the psychology of it.

We're both Irish and we have a lot of cultural similarities.

I think what's really important to convey sometimes

in these love stories between men,

I think what's actually a little bit more radical

is tenderness rather than sexuality.

And to get the balance between those two things

is very important.

And I think that's why maybe people are responding

in a way to the particular type of chemistry

that's there in the movie.

[upbeat music]

Specter.

C, it's a funny character to play.

The whole experience, again,

it was with Sam Mendez and it was fun.

It was a fun character to play.

I was in all these incredible sets,

and I was thrilled to be there.

Because people like you,

paper pushers and politicians are too spineless

to do what needs to be done.

So I made an alliance to put the power where it should be,

and now you want to throw it away

for the sake of democracy, whatever the hell that is?

One of the lessons that I learned

from being in a big franchise movie like that

is that what's important to the audience

is exactly the same thing that's important

on a low budget movie:

audiences recognize authenticity and aliveness,

and that was a very big lesson for me to learn,

to just go, You don't need $300 million

to make a scene exciting; you need good dialogue.

And as Ken Loach says, you just need to be able

to see the whites of the actor's eyes.

So that's just something that I think

it's just learning about relaxation,

no matter what the scenario is.

And that's what I would say to young actors,

is to try not and be intimidated by the playfulness,

which is something I say far too much.

But in order to play a part,

you have to be in a playful atmosphere.

And being intimidated is the opposite of being playful.

So to hold onto that as much as you can.

[upbeat music]

Pride.

Another film that sort of completely changed my life,

beautiful Script by Steven Beresford.

I don't know, it was a very important film,

in the sense that the 15 leading characters were all gay.

So you're not playing the gay character.

They're as distinct from each other

as any other characters are.

What's the Breckon Beacons?

That's a coalfield, there. That is.

All right, what are we supposed to do,

stick a bloody pin in it?

Do you know people, Gethin?

No, I haven't been back there in 16 years.

Why not?

Well, let's just say there isn't always a welcome

in the hillside.

Shall I get you the phone book?

[Andrew] It's a true story.

It concerns itself with other attributes

of the gay people in the story,

rather than just their sexuality.

It's a film that I still feel

like if anybody hasn't seen it, no matter who you are,

it's just one that just lifts the spirits.

It's really, really beautiful.

The thing that I remember really clearly

was having to look at the way

the press talked about gay people in the '80s.

It even upsets me even thinking about it now.

It was so awful.

You'd be genuinely shocked

what they were allowed to say as headlines.

Really disgusting.

What it makes me think

is that if there was suspicion and prejudice from parents,

if their son or daughter came out as gay,

in some ways it would be understandable,

because what they were fed

was so suspicious-making and awful.

It just pointed to me how responsible the press is,

not just then, but also now,

in establishing what is acceptable to talk about

in relation to other human beings.

[upbeat music]

Hamlet.

They say it's the biggest theatrical challenge

that you can have.

I would say to any young actor,

no matter what your background or whatever your gender,

or whatever your vibe is, is to give Hamlet a go.

You'll find yourself in it.

And it's not stuffy and it's not academic.

He was really into the blood, sweat, and tears

of acting in the, give it a lash.

How weary, stale, flat,

and unprofitable seemed to me

all the uses of the world.

Fie on't. Ah, fie.

What you have to do in that character is to sort of,

somebody described it as a jug,

and you pour the personality of the actor playing it

into the character.

The jug can facilitate almost any type of personality,

which is what makes it

such an extraordinarily written character.

That character allows you to play

almost every facet of yourself.

The wounded son, the lover, the griever,

the prince, the warrior.

There's so many aspects to that character.

And also you're required to have

an extraordinary amount of physical stamina.

We did that play 150 times,

and after playing that part, everything just seems easier.

I played it a few years ago now.

It took me a few years to even get over.

I was like Bambi, shaking after finishing it.

Hamlet is the ultimate actor's imp,

which is just a character where you just feel like,

That is me. I can do that, even though it's not me.

That to me is the ultimate one.

I still feel so grateful that I even got to play that part.

[Crew] I saw you talking about that moment

where the gun misfired.

Yeah.

[Crew] What happened with that? Just after the misfire.

What happened was I was supposed to fire

and threaten to kill my mother,

played by legend, Juliet Stevenson.

And I had to point this gun at her.

Peter Wight was playing Polonius,

hiding behind the curtain in this famous closet scene

in Hamlet, and I hear a noise,

I'm threatening her with the gun,

but I hear the noise,

and then I'm supposed to shoot him through the curtain.

But I was threatening Juliet,

and the gun went off and I went across the stage.

I was like,

Oh my God, I've literally shot Juliet Stevenson

in the face.

But of course, Peter was behind the curtain

and he just thought, Oh my God, I've been shot.

So he sort of died and the audience was like,

What the fuck? It wasn't even pointing at him.

So it was like he died of fright or something.

Anyway, we got through it

and the audience was like, What the hell?

But it added this sort of incredible tension to the scene

and I went down to Juliet afterwards

and I was like, Juliet, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

I don't know what happened. And she was like, I loved it.

I loved it.

Because she's such a theater animal.

So just to get to work with people

who just have literally been shot in the face,

it just shows the commitment to the evening,

even though it made absolutely no storytelling sense.

But you know, the show must go on.