Andrew Scott Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters

somebody actually asked me to to tattoo it'll pass on their face which I declined flea bag I played the priest in uh fle bag and then he became known as the 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 him that Phoebe Waterbridge and I had worked together in the theat maybe 10 years before we've done flea bag I've always wanted to do a little bit of romantic comedy so to speak so she saw something in me uh and uh we kind of created that character a little bit together I love you it'll pass I adore Phoebe Phoebe is one of my best friends and I think I think she's a great genius people talk a lot about you know 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 met on the tube and you're interested in them even though you don't know anything about them and so um no I didn't I didn't create a name for him I just really focused on this um 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 sort of 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 it's kind of sad isn't it maybe they'll meet again 1917 I worked with Sam in the theater uh so it's a very sort of theatrical idea to just do a scene without any cutting there's no edits in that you know in the theater you act for 2 hours without stopping if you stopped in the audience people would be thinking that's a bit of a strange thing to do just keep going there were um uh explosions and stuff going off so if I messed up a line it meant that they had to reprogram everything you know 2 miles down the road which um unfortunately I I made them do cuz I messed up look out for the Bowing chat 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 Sam said a brilliant thing which was to relieve yourself of the pressure to try and get it in three takes which you might might do in in a normal film so I I did it in maybe we had about 30 takes just to so you were really really fluent with the language usually you you feel like oh well we've got most of it but we can pick that part up from where from where you made that last mistake and we can um we can go from there but in this you have to if you made a mistake in minute 7 of an 8 minute scene you have to go right back to the beginning so I love all that sort of experiment expent Al type of filming and I like the idea that experimental film making isn't just reserved for lowbudget stuff it was it was a big old movie that and I like the fact that there was still a sort of courageousness about the film making process but that's Sam he's a he's a theater man settle a bet what day is it Friday Friday well well well none of us was right this idiot thought it was Tuesday I think it's important to just have a wet in those scenarios in drama when we're doing very Bleak subjects I think there's a an attempt to S of have no lightness in it and that's not the way human beings work most of the time we're looking for the light you know when we're in the darkness so he thought he was kind of sarcastic kind of character I like that about him cynical probably and probably have seen an awful lot of terrible terrible things Sherlock I was not overly familiar with Sherlock Holmes so I think that helped I didn't really think too much about previous incarnations so in a way I was kind of naive about um Mor arti and what's required of somebody who might be be asked to play that par 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 kind of quite relaxed about destroying the world kill you no don't be obvious I mean I'm going to kill you anyway someday I don't want to 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 burn the heart out of you the challenge for me in that character was to try and hold on to his power I remember a good few times asking Mark and stevenh who are the brilliant writers on on Sherlock for him not to say too much or just say less which they were always in total agreement about just that if you had an amazing like bullseye line to sort of cut around all the other lines I think that helps with the sort of um building of the mythology of those kind of Icon 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 book Benedict created this incredible hero and so my job is to match him and to not be intimidated by the that that character and I think there's a kind of laconic to him not being uh 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 I think and uh we just had loads of fun how you going to do it burn me well that's the problem final problem have you worked out what it is yet what's the final problem I did tell you but did you listen 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 I always say to young actors just because you don't look like a character doesn't mean that you aren't you can't embody the character that's not the most important thing Black Mirror well the challenge of that was to it was all set in a car I think it was maybe a month 3 weeks or a month and really really hot summera and how do you make all the scenes not exactly the same how do you build the tension they did a lot of work in Black Mirror to change the angles of the the shots so visually it looks slightly different uh airport yeah Terminal 3 did you work in that place SMI rine yeah 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 like f you want to be like so how much of the final letters of the alphabet do you not show at the beginning X Y and Z don't show them modern [ __ ] companies everyone looks so [ __ ] young how was anybody looking in a sense of [ __ ] hierarchy Jesus Christ The Script is so expert at that and so that's what my job was like you think what's going on here and because I think there's a message at the bottom of it which is just like look up look up from your screen you might see what's actually happening in the world little notification thing someone lik the comment that I made photo and er you just glanced at it you know that's all the time at some point we're going to have to put some sort of cap on the complete lawlessness of the cruelty that fam 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 is a brilliant drama that is able to explore that some people I think don't even know that Black Mirror means you know the small black mirror that we have in our pockets so there you go in case you didn't know you know what's your Uber score my Uber score that's a really good question oh is it out of 4.74 out of out of five was pretty damn good I think all of us strangers Adam is a screenwriter who is um trying to write a story about his parents who have been killed in a car accident it's quite a surreal story and it explores a lot of things grief love loss loneliness Andrew he 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 defin defitely feel like I brought my own thorny feelings or uncomfortable feelings or vulnerable feelings to the the RO I tried in some ways just not to act in some ways which sometimes is the biggest biggest challenge actually is to how do you completely strip yourself of all the stuff that uh is fake they died just before I was 12 I'm trying to write about them at the moment how's it going 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 sort of young queer audiences or whether people who have lost parents or people who just feel lonely or people who who just appreciate how fragile and tender life is and how how short a time we're here for with Paul we just have chemistry I just love him as a person we were 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 we have a lot of cultural um 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 [Music] Spectre C is a funny character to play the whole experience was again it was with Sam Mendes and it was fun it was a fun character to play I I was in you know 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 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 lowbudget 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 a scene exciting when you need good dialogue and as Ken Lo says you just need to be able to see the the white to the actor's eyes so that's just something that I 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 not to look at the not to try not and be intimidate intimidated 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 is being of being of being playful so to hold on to that as much as you can Pride another film that sort of completely changed my life beautiful script by Steven barisford 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 the gay character so they're as distinct from each other as as any other characters are that's the bre and beacons that's a CO field there that is all right what we supposed to do stick a bloody pin in it do you know people get in no I haven't been bucked there in 16 years why not well let's just say there isn't always a welcome in the hillsides shall I get you the phone book it's a true story it concerns itself with other attributes of the gay people of the gay people in the 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 uh 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 um awful it just pointed to me how responsible the the Press is not just then but also now in establishing what is acceptable to talk about um in relation to other human beings Hess it's the biggest 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 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 of acting and uh you know give it give it a lash how weary stale flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of the world fire poot F 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 into the character and almost any The Jug can can sort of facilitate almost any type of Personality which what which is what makes it such a an extraordinarily written character that character allows you to play almost every facet of yourself the wounded son the lover the griver the prince the warrior you know there's so many aspects to that to that character and also you're you're required to have an extraordinary amount of physical stamina we we did that play 150 times and after playing that part everything just seems easier I mean I played it a few years ago now it took me a few years to even get over it was like bumby shaking little after 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 I can do that um even though it's not me that to me is the ultimate one I'm still I I still feel so grateful that I even got to got to play that part I saw you talking about that moment where the gun misfired yeah what happened when that just after he misfired what happened was I was supposed to Fire and threaten to kill my mother played by G Legend Juliet Stevens and I had to point this gun her Peter white who was playing ponus hiding behind the curtain in this famous closet scene in HL 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 um was was behind the curtain and he uh he just thought oh my god I've been shot so he sort of died and the Audi was like what the [ __ ] it wasn't even wasn't even pointing at him so it it's was like he died of like I know a fright or something anyway we sort of 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 she was like I loved it I loved it don't you think she's such a like theater animal so just to get to work with people who are just like have literally been shot in the face just shows the commitment to the to the evening even though it made absolutely no um storytelling sense but uh you know The Show Must Go On

Channel: British GQ

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Id: vz5qWdQSKYQ

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 18 2023