Andrew Scott

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0:12Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which leading artistic figures reveal the most important influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson, and my guest in this episode is the actor Andrew Scott. He won a BAFTA as the evil Moriarty in Sherlock, but is equally loved for a divine television role as the hot priest in Fleabag. A prolific and versatile stage actor, he starred in many plays by contemporary dramatists, including Simon Stevens. He played Hamlet to great critical acclaim and won an Olivier Award for his starring role in Noel Coward's Present Laughter.

0:49His latest film role is All of Us Strangers, in which he plays a single gay man haunted by the death of his parents. How's that? How am I saying? Usual, what did you have for breakfast, Andrew, just to get a few words? Well, I've just stuffed myself with this... This is breakfast. ..an invigorated smoothie with matcha, flax seeds and vitamins, which helps give your body a boost, in case you were wondering. Andrew Scott, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you so much. On this programme, I ask my guests to choose the most important influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity.

1:24And your first choice is your mother. So before we talk about her specifically and her influence, tell us about your family and your upbringing. You were born in Dublin, 1976. Yes, yeah, yeah. I was born in Dublin. My father was from the west of Ireland and my mother's from the north of Ireland. I have two sisters, Sarah's 11 months older than me and then I have a younger sister too so I had a sort of very I suppose suburban kind of childhood and my father worked at a place called Foss which is the Irish word for growth which was a company that helps young people find employment and my mother was an art teacher so when I was six or seven I knew that I was really interested in drawing and painting and that's something that I was really, really obsessed with growing up.

2:14Actually, I continued drawing right through my teenage years and around the time of my 17th birthday, just before it, I used to go to these little drama classes and I got cast in a film, a small Irish film. This is Korea. Korea. On the very same day that I won a bursary, I had entered this competition to win a bursary to educate myself in painting and art And it was quite a big deal of money. And it happened on exactly the same day. So on a fateful day when I was 17, I kind of had to choose between these two things. Wow, could have been a very different life then. Absolutely could have. It's like the fork in the road.

2:53Yeah, it really, really was. And actually, I'm sort of left with a sense of guilt, I suppose is the word, because it was such a huge part of my life growing up. And it's not as much of a part of my life as I'd kind of like it to be now. You know, you find when you don't exercise those artistic muscles, you lose them. And it sort of feels like it's a language that I can speak that I don't speak a lot. But my mother was incredibly influential in the sense that she encouraged both my painting and acting too. You say she was an art teacher at school, at your school? No, not at my school. Few. No. I got the sense that she was a sort of popular teacher because, you know, you'd be in town with her or whatever.

3:31And you'd see these students come up and go, hey, Miss Scott, like they weren't avoiding her. The art teacher was always the most. The art teacher, yeah, the art teacher, the art teacher, because people enjoyed going there. It was a kind of refuge for so many of us, certainly was in my school. So did she encourage you at home, then? Did she tutor you? Kind of, yeah. Her great thing was, that I think has really affected, you know, my acting as well, she would say, a good drawer never rubs out. So she wouldn't like us to rub out the mistakes. She'd be like, you know, if you're going to draw a line, draw the line, a strong, like a strong line on the page.

4:05Then if you make a mistake, then you draw another line. So you have some sort of flair and that you go into something with a strong decision. Fully commit. Yeah, fully commit. And I sort of, you know, in acting, I sort of, I feel that as well. I feel that quite strongly. Well, I was going to say, with the risk of being too simplistic, you do seem to fully commit when it comes to roles. You throw yourself in. And so there is that part of that is the legacy of your mother. Yeah, I think so. I do love rehearsing, but I don't like sitting around talking about it a lot. and some actors absolutely adore the collecting of information and even scrapbooking and all that kind of stuff and I'm definitely somebody who just likes to go in and draw the line and make the mistakes and do, like make loads of mistakes but to be doing it as soon as possible.

4:49There is that Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken so do you ever think if you had taken that road if you'd gone to art college what you would be doing now if you hadn't started acting? Yeah, I think it's more about my personality slightly. The reason I started speech and drama was more for the speech element. I had a real lisp when I was a kid. I had a really strong lisp and I had to go to these kind of elocution lessons and I used to have to say, sheet cells, seashells on the seashore. And eventually that disappeared like it does for a lot of children. But then the drama element I really got into and suddenly when I was getting up to do these improvisations or these poems, I was very happy and it just brought something out of me and continued to as I was kind of struggling with myself in some way in my teenage years, acting was a real way of affecting different types of possibilities within myself.

5:40I don't think I would have developed in the same way that I would sort of personally had I just been a visual artist. But it'd be really interesting. I do think about that sometimes. And I do fantasize about just giving up the showbiz and just applying myself to... Because I do feel, you know, I'm always slagging my parents off because they're always saying, why would you not me draw a picture in between matinees of Hamlet? And you don't? So you don't paint a draw anymore? I do, I do. I go in fits and starts. And the thing that I love to draw is people. Portraits. Portraits, yeah. Life drawing has always been the thing that really interests me.

6:17Arguably, that is what you were doing on stage and screen, isn't it? There's definitely a link there. But it was your mum who pushed you into drama classes at the weekend as well. And your first acting experience was at quite a young age, wasn't it? When you were in television commercials. Yeah, it was in television commercials.

6:36And, you know, theatre, I was in a sort of young amateur theatre group. I remember being in The Wizard of Oz when I was 10 or 11. And I knew I was the tin man, the guy with the heart, or the guy who eventually got the heart. And I did feel, oh, wow, I can do this. And I loved it. I remember clearly having a little Ferrero Rocher Perspex box. with all the things that I, my treasure possessions when I was about eight or nine. And there was a little note in it that I had for years that I don't have anymore. And I said, my ambition is to be an actor. I remember it in this really, really childish writing, seeing that.

7:13So it's extraordinary to me. It's always, I don't really remember a time where it hasn't been in my life. So you didn't go to art college, as you might have done. No. Went to drama school instead. And then you started at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was at the Abbey when I was 19 and I was playing these fantastic parts. You know, John Crowley gave me my first part there in Six Characters in Search of an Author and I was in Oscar Wilde plays. And when I think about it, I was insanely young. I'm sure the other actors were looking like, who is this child? And young looking as well, even for your age.

7:45Yeah, yeah, I was. I did look young. It was an incredible start. And again, I had gone to Trinity to, I went to quite an academic school. and I sort of thought, oh, maybe I should have a degree in drama. That's the most secure making thing you can get a degree in. I don't know why I thought that would give me some sort of security. But that wasn't for me. It was academic. And because I'd acted as a child, I just felt and still feel that it's something that's completely instinctive. And I'm always talking about the fact that you play a part. You don't work a part. It's playfulness is what you have to hold on to.

8:21So an academic approach to something that I love just wasn't for me. And so this opportunity came because I'd done this film. And so I got these auditions and I kind of thought I could do this four year degree in drama. And then what would I do? What I would love would be to get a part in the Abbey. So why wait? I kind of knew that was just for me. And you worked with Carol Rice, the great director, Carol Rice. Was that the Abbey? That was at the Gay Theatre. Yeah, Long Day's Journey and Tonight. So you did Eugene O 'Neill with him, but he was known, of course, Saturday night, Sunday morning. He'd done it in the 60s.

8:56Also, I think he did the French left-handest woman. Yes, he did. So what did he teach you, if anything? I mean, what was it like working with somebody who was renowned as one of the greats at a young age? It was detail. By that stage, I was maybe 21. I was playing this really extraordinary part in Long Day's Journey Into Night. It was all about whiskey. I don't know if you know that, but it's all about the sort of frugality of a father. Irish family. Irish family in America. and the father, you know, is obsessed with who's been drinking the whiskey and he marks the levels on the bottle. And I remember one day early in rehearsal, I was pouring the whiskey and drinking it.

9:33I remember Carol saying, I don't believe the way you pour. I said, sorry? I don't believe the way you pour the whiskey. Because I was probably sloshing it into the glass with great abandon because I wasn't thinking about that. and of course he was right the way he would pour that whiskey would be with incredible precision and fear and that sort of stuff when you're at that age I think it's something that I sort of take for granted now because it's sort of maybe a bit more within me that I think about all those kind of things The attention to detail The attention to detail but then they're the kind of things that make magic and the fact that he cares about that or that he notices that But sometimes I think great directing is just about just noticing and great acting as well.

10:23But he was incredibly kind to me and it was so different for me. So I was really developing something that I still cherish, which is an absolute devotion to good writing. I don't believe you can give a great performance without great acting. Great writing, I mean. Sorry, with great writing, exactly. Yeah, and even reading a script, I can't bear TV speak. because I think the way that people construct sentences in real life, the colourful way in which people express themselves, I love. And the great writers really understand those rhythms. And so when it's kind of TV speak that people say things in a very banal way and they say things that only people say in television.

11:05As an explanatory dialogue. You know, the one I always think of is there's just something I need to do first or I knew I'd find you here. You know, those things that people never really ever say. So you usually know within the first couple of pages just something with a little bit of flair and then you think, oh wow, I want to be able to say that.

11:27Your next choice for this programme, Andrew Scott, or choices, are the comic actors Victoria Wood and Julie Walters. So when did you first see them? Well, it would have probably been on TV in the late 80s or 90s and I just couldn't believe it. There's something about comedic acting that thrills me. But you've also been looking at foreign languages, haven't you, Marjorie? Yes, I have, Joan, because there's nothing more annoying than reaching our holiday destination only to find that nobody understands a blithering word we're saying. So what do we do, Marjorie, go to evening classes, buy a dictionary, listen to tape?

12:04No, we don't, Joan. We speak slowly and clearly in our own language, and if that doesn't work, we start shouting. serious acting or that kind of drama that's just steeped in one dark wash of colour, I don't respond to because I don't believe it's the way human beings behave. The sense of the absurd is something that only human beings have. You know, like my dog who I adore can have fun and is playful, but he doesn't have a sense of this is ridiculous. What are we doing here? He doesn't have a sense of the absurd that only human beings have, which is why when I'm talking about acting, if you're representing what it's like ultimately to be a human being, if you miss out the sense of the absurd or a sense of humour, then you're missing such a major part of what makes human beings wonderful.

12:50So if we're having trouble making ourselves understood, turn up the volume and they'll get the message. Absolutely, Joan, but do be prepared for the odd holiday slip-up. That's right, because even though Marjorie and Pedro are delighted about the baby, Marjorie did originally only ask him for a ham sandwich and a small mineral water. Comedic acting is a real source of joy to me and so Victoria Wood and Julie Walters were so influential on me particularly Julie Walters because she's done so many different things and her ability to be able to deliver a line and that sort of symbiosis between the two of them is sort of extraordinary to me.

13:33That's the joy of making people laugh And so I try and bring that as much as I can into my own work. And talking about the sort of unrelenting seriousness, you don't like that. With Victoria Wood, there was often the inverse, wasn't there? It was funny on the surface, but there was a depth and there was a pay for us. There was a melancholy very often. Absolutely. There's something that just people felt really, really seen by. And I do think with great comedy, I think you have to look for the soul, even if it's just a tiny moment. And conversely, I feel, it was something I was obsessed with when we were doing Hamlet.

14:08Hamlet is a hysterical character. It's a very, very funny play. Or Chekhov. We've just done some Chekhov there in the West End. And, you know, it's insanely funny. And I hate the idea when these great writers are considered that there's, you know, when they're humorless, because that's not the reason that they've survived so long. They're populist geniuses. And I don't like when they're kidnapped by academics. So watching Victoria Wood and Julie Walters, whether that's the Wood and Walters show or the Victoria Wood show and doing acorn antiques and all those schedules, was that family viewing in the sky?

14:43Yeah, yeah. You all sat and watched it together? Absolutely, yeah. Both my parents, all my family actually are funny. Yeah, and there's something, even as a child, that I feel like I didn't even really fully understand, but you understand the music. Like so many people in the late 80s, I remember seeing an audience with Victoria Wood where she does that extraordinary song. So she said, let's do it, let's do it, do it till her heart's go boo. Go native, creative, living in the living room. This folly is jolly, bend me over backwards on me hostess trolley. Let's do it, let's do it tonight. The Ballad of Frida and Barry.

15:21Ballad of Frida and Barry. Otherwise known as Let's Do It. Let's Do It, exactly. I mean, it's complete, it's complete, it's genius. I'm imploring, I'm boring Let me read this catalogue on vinyl flooring I can't do it, I can't do it And the joy, you know, spanked me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly, I can't do it I mean, I was thinking about, you know, the choices today about high art and low art and that's something that I really don't believe in Well it's like Noel Coward in a way, isn't it? Absolutely, absolutely it's about Noel Coward I hate when Noel Coward is considered frothy because there's something that he was saying through comedy that tells the truth.

15:59You get away with so much stuff. We did a version of Present Laughter where we changed the sexes a couple of years ago. Some of the stuff that sort of seemed sort of overtly much more gay, frankly. And people would say, did you change that line? And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. That was all there, but it was just coded. And he did a lot more in a subversive way to say what he meant and to understand what was actually going on in the culture that way than a lot of people who refuse to talk about that in their work. I admire that. I think there's something clever and wonderful about that. I saw that production in which you are playing a high-maintenance star with a complicated love life.

16:38Yeah. I mean, it looked like you were having the time of your life there. Bliss. Complete bliss. Sometimes he has lines where you have to eyeball each other and wait for the rolls of laughter to dissipate. I suppose it's of no interest to any of you that I have been awakened from deep deep sleep with a lot of you screaming like banshees what's going on I've been talking to miss Dillington who the hell is miss Dillington she's in the spare room I didn't ask where she was I asked who she was we might look it up in the telephone book she lost her latchkey if you know what I mean go away Fred and get me some coffee right yeah just said right here good sir you met her to party and you brought her home here and you told her about your early struggles and she stayed the night oh I remember not she's a darling I'm mad about her as you mentioned you had a role in that independent Irish film career at the age of I think only 17 and then you had a small party in Steven Spielberg saving private Ryan you didn't get past the beach though no I was I keep saying I was the guy in green.

17:51One of the dead guys in green. Yeah, well, yeah, one you wouldn't even have known. Yeah, that was a really extraordinary experience because Hollywood came to town and it was shot on Curriclo Beach and there was a group of theatre actors and we all auditioned. I had one line which was, nobody's where they're supposed to be! And then Tom Hanks rolled over me and the rest was history. But yeah, we were down and I was on Curriclo Beach and it was an extraordinary thing just to be able to look at a production of that enormity. Not your only soldier role. I mean, you were in Band of Brothers, the television series as well.

18:26And 1917. 1917, yeah. I don't know why, because I'm so not into... I mean, I cannot stand weapons. I just find them... I had to shoot one recently on stage and I don't... They used to come on Band of Brothers, they used to say, because there were army vets everywhere that made you do 20 press-ups if you called your weapon a gun or whatever. And these go, here comes the reluctant soldier. And they were right, I was. I suppose it's just I'm a lover, not a fighter. Through this holy unction, may the Lord pardon you, your faults and whatever sins thou hast committed.

19:07I do hate losing these to the hunt, so when they start shooting at you, couldn't you be so kind as to throw it back? There's a good chap. Cheerio. I think about 1917, it wasn't a gun in your hand, it was a cigarette lighter, wasn't it? It was a cigarette lighter. That you had to fire up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd worked with Sam before Mendes in the theatre and we had to do these kind of six-minute scenes with no coverage. The best way to describe it is like if you had to shoot a multi-million dollar film on your iPhone. So you'd have to capture everybody just by moving the iPhone around, you'd capture everybody's face and the story and blah, blah, blah, and keep it moving.

19:45So it meant that if you made a mistake in minute six of the seven-minute scene, you wouldn't be able to cover it by doing a close-up or, you know, edit it together. So it meant you had to go right back to the beginning and start the game. For those who don't know, 1917, the caseat is it is a single shot all the way through. All the way through, which is sort of extraordinary. But actually patched together through long individual scenes. Long, yes. Some could be 11 minutes, some could be six minutes. But it looks like it's all just the camera starts to go. And it's an extraordinary experience for that.

20:12But our section was seven minutes. and you know I love that you know in a sense for actors who work in the theatre you know you don't have any cutting point at all I've just as I say I was just doing this solo version of Uncle Vanya in the West End and you speak on your own for two hours and that's no big deal so nobody to cover for you if you fluff nobody but what's sort of wonderful if you do fluff you don't have to dart eyes at the other actor to say I'm sorry can you go back and you go okay I know what I've done I know what mistake I've made and you're playing off for yourself so you can go back and it's actually in some ways a little less stressful.

20:491917 directed by Sam Mendes as you say with whom you also worked on the Bond film, Spectre. Playing a villain there. I won't say too much about that in case people haven't seen it but your big breakthrough had also been playing a villain in Sherlock.

21:08How much say did you have in reinventing the character of James Moriarty who became Jim Moriarty? Well, again, it kind of goes back a little bit to my mum because my feeling, as it always is, is to put a strong line on the page. And so I don't think it's of too much value, frankly, for me to go, OK, well, I'm going to watch seven versions of that and do a sort of amalgam of all those things. The way it was written was a young version of Sherlock Holmes. Contemporary set. It's set in contemporary London. It was really funny. and kind of audacious, a little bit playful, a little bit sort of theatrical.

21:47But it's a blank canvas for you, isn't it, Offord? And I suppose part of the impact of that role was that you were, even though you'd done a lot of parts on screen and on stage up to that point, you were relatively unknown. Absolutely. I think that's one of the reasons that the character worked, I think. Do you know what happens if you don't leave me alone, Sherlock? Do you? Oh, let me guess. I get killed. 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.

22:29I will burn the heart out of you. Sherlock was an enormous success almost immediately after the first episode. 11 million people watched it it was on BBC One people adored it immediately it was kind of extraordinary actually and by the third episode my character was due to appear for 10 minutes at the end of the third episode by which stage there were articles in the paper saying who is going to be Moriarty, is it going to be all these famous actors and I was like oh my god and I hadn't seen it I watched it along with the other 11 million people and I think the fact that people didn't recognise me was a good thing because they were like, what is this?

23:17It was a real eye-opener for me because I, at that stage, whenever that was, 12 years ago, I was like, oh, I wonder what they think about this on the internet. On the internet. And you go and you read stuff that is so horrific and, you know, of course it was wonderful. Some people thought it was great and people were really celebrating and some people absolutely hated it. I was really devastated by that and embarrassed. I thought, oh my God, I've done it wrong. I've completely humiliated myself by doing something that... I was disobedient in some way. And I remember calling Mark Gatiss and saying, I'm really sorry, that's...

23:54And he was like... Because of course all you remember is the negative stuff. And he said, oh God, don't go. I meant to say... Never look online. Yeah, never look online because he had such history with, you know, online opinion. And actually it was a wonderful thing to, I'm glad I did it because I really believe now that if you're going to do something original and that's our job is to put our own autograph, as I say, on stuff, there is going to always be, if you're doing something right, somebody who goes, oh my God, no. Absolutely. I reject this. I wanted it to be this. And I think having universal praise is overpraised.

24:30I don't, I think if you're doing something original, you should have slightly diverse opinions on it. And as you say, it comes back to your mum, it's putting down that very committing to that line on the page. Some people will go, I don't like that, but that's who you are as an artist and I really, the more I work in this industry, the more I just believe, do what you have to do and I suppose suck up in some ways that some people aren't going to decisions that you make aren't going to be popular. And I remember in the second series for that, I was like, am I going to do this differently? And I thought, no, I'm not going to.