Andrew Scott: A Love Story

By Miruna Tiberiu

 

“This is a love story”, says Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s protagonist in the opening lines of Fleabag’s (2016-2019) second season, before all-but-breaking the Internet with the introduction of Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest in the episodes that follow. She utters these words to us, her eager audience, the blood that she’d been wordlessly cleaning up from her nose still drying, no context given. Scott’s Hot Priest, as the Internet has since baptised him, is heard as a disembodied voice from afar. His character’s place in our hearts comes as unexpectedly as the place he subsequently gains in Fleabag’s. This, too, is a love story. A love story between Scott and his many faces, between Scott as one of the most celebrated actors today, and us, his loyal following.

 

Andrew Scott with co-star Paul Mescal and Emma Stone at the BAFTAs 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

Andrew Scott with co-star Paul Mescal and Emma Stone at the BAFTAs 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

 

The Meet Cute         

Andrew Scott has been set to mend hearts since day one. Born in 1976 in Dublin, he was brought up by an art teacher mother and a father who worked at a youth employment agency. He describes his Irishness in the form of a good measure of Catholic guilt as well as a strong and specific Irish sense of humour and eagerness to talk to people. With the support of his mother, he began attending acting classes in an effort to get rid of his childhood lisp. Despite being a shy kid, he took to the medium almost immediately, acting in TV commercials, portraying the most tragic of Shakespearian heroes in youth theatre productions, and even playing the Tin Man, who he aptly describes as ‘the guy with the heart’, in The Wizard of Oz at age 10.

Fast forward a few years, he is 17, forced to make a decision which will come to define his life and career. On the same day, he receives both a scholarship to study painting at art school and an offer to star in the independent Irish war film Korea (1995). After wrapping up on the film, he attempts studying once more, this time beginning an academic Drama course at Trinity College Dublin, the alma mater of his future co-star Paul Mescal. He shortly drops out, drawn to dreams of taking on the stage over learning about its theory in lecture halls.

So, our meet cute with Scott happens in the theatre, the affinity with which he has maintained to present-day. He describes stage acting using wonderfully-fitting cardiac imagery: ‘It goes directly into your veins. It’s pure. You start at the beginning of the story and you go through to the end.’ Most of Scott’s early career pans out on the stage. After dropping out of university, he joins Dublin’s Abbey Theatre for six months before moving to London at 22, where he graces the UK’s theatrical nucleus with roles in Conor McPherson’s Dublin Carol and Joe Hill-Gibbins’ A Girl in a Car with a Man at the Royal Court Theatre.

Andrew Scott as Hamlet in Robert Icke's staging of Shakespeare's play at the Almeida theatre, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

Andrew Scott as Hamlet in Robert Icke’s staging of Shakespeare’s play at the Almeida theatre, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

He gathers momentum as a theatre actor, working with acclaimed director Sam Mendes on The Vertical Hour and, most recently, taking on lead roles on the West End’s most famous stages in Hamlet, Present Laughter, and a one-man adaptation of the Chekhov tragedy Vanya. Scott has spoken about the exhilaration of creating a microcosm in which anything is possible for a few hours, explaining the theatre as ‘an art form that is ephemeral’. He feels this excitement through his actor’s eyes as well as his viewers who become enraptured with his every move.

His screen debut as the lead of Cathal Black’s Korea (which Scott maintains no one has ever seen so it doesn’t really count) marks the beginning of his relationship to the world of the screen. His first few screen roles are all in war films, from his one-line-long moment of fame in Spielberg’s 1998 Saving Private Ryan (he is credited as ‘Soldier on the Beach’ no less) to Band of Brothers (2001) and 1917 (2019). But surrounding himself with weapons and violence did not come naturally to the actor; ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter’, he jokes. So, he remains a heart-mender at his core.

 

Did you Miss Me?

Andrew Scott as Jim Moriarty in Steven Moffat's and Mark Gatiss' TV series Sherlock (2010-2017). Courtesy of the artist.

Andrew Scott as Jim Moriarty in Steven Moffat’s and Mark Gatiss’ TV series Sherlock (2010-2017). Courtesy of the artist.

It was the hearts of the masses that Scott won on the 8th of August 2010, following the release of Steven Moffat’s and Mark Gatiss’ TV phenomenon Sherlock’s first season finale. Whilst this was well over a decade ago, the world has still not recovered from Scott’s debut as sexy, playful, devilish baddie Jim Moriarty. Sherlock became, for its loyal fanbase of ‘Cumberbitches’ including my own teenage self, a religion in its own right. I endlessly rewatched the sparse selection of movie-long episodes, committing all iconic lines to memory for future quoting to my middle-school friendship group. The show’s force was undoubtedly fed by Scott’s unforgettable performance as Moriarty, who would become one of the most recognisable TV villains of the century. Scott’s face became synonymous with catchphrases like ‘IOU’ and ‘did you miss me?’. He describes the almost overnight change where he went from peacefully riding the tube and walking around London to having his photo secretly taken by fans in public and being given CDs of fan-made videos shipping Moriarty and Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) as initially freaky, even odd, but also says that it doesn’t bother him now.

 

I Love You. It’ll Pass.

Perhaps the Sherlock fanbase was good practice for the still larger, more explosive Internet phenomenon that Scott was about to become the centre of. Hot Priest could never have existed without Scott. Literally, because Phoebe Waller-Bridge, whom Scott calls ‘one of my main homies’, wrote the character specially for him. The pair’s bond spans a good 15 years of friendship. Waller-Bridge has nothing but praise for her old friend, describing him at once as ‘an absolute pixie of mischief’ and someone who ‘can stop time with his honesty’.

What made us fall in love with Hot Priest was less the Catholic guilt that haunts so many of us (though apparently Scott’s performance led directly to an increase in searches of religious porn by a whopping 162 percent) and more the sheer honesty that emanated from his performance. At its core, the love story between Fleabag and Hot Priest is one that ends with no ‘happily ever after’ in spite of all the love that is left lingering. Beneath the endlessly-memefied closing sequence at the bus stop by night (you remember the one) lies such a raw yet universal experience of love which we can all connect to. We can’t always be with the person we love, whether that is because the world doesn’t accept our love, or because the practical rhythms of adult life get in the way. ‘Not all love stories end the same way’, Scott reminds us.

Andrew Scott as Hot Priest in Phoebe Waller-Bridge's TV series Fleabag. Courtesy of the artist.

Andrew Scott as Hot Priest in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s TV series Fleabag. Courtesy of the artist.

Scott has stated countless times that his most recent roles have all been punctuated by a certain humanity. Though the name Andrew Scott has become synonymous with the image of the screen villain – think Jim Moriarty, the Bond franchise’s C, Tom Ripley in Steven Zaillian’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, and O’Brien in the 75th-anniversary audiobook of Orwell’s 1984 – Scott vehemently opposes labels such as ‘troubled’, ‘psychopath’ and ‘villain’ when describing his darker roles. His true mastery of the roles comes from the humanity he extends to such outsider characters. For what emerges from his darkest performances is a fervent empathy, an extended arm, an understanding that life beyond the margins is lonely, difficult to survive, and that we all deserve to be loved. Scott seeks to understand his characters’ natures before their actions, to see the three-dimensional life in them. As he so wonderfully puts it in relation to his latest venture into darkness, ‘there’s Tom Ripley in all of us’.

 

You Are Always on My Mind

Such an understanding of the outsider shines through Scott’s latest cinematic masterpiece as the lead of Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers (2023). Scott plays so subtly with the transcendental loneliness that emanates from the film. He describes feeling the importance of the film as both his first substantial lead role and simultaneously a queer role, revealing that he wore some of his own clothes in the film and often phoned his parents and siblings to ask about details of his own childhood in the 80s. Whilst he tapped into his own experiences growing up as a queer person – homosexuality wasn’t decriminalised in Ireland until 1993 – in a profoundly-personal way, Scott nonetheless maintains that his process as an actor in the film was founded on an exploration which transcends his queer identity.

Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers (2023). Courtesy of the artist.

Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers (2023). Courtesy of the artist.

Scott has expressed his ambivalence at being pigeonholed into the ‘gay actor’ category in the past. Sure, he has provided our community with some of the most sensitive performances in queer cinema this century, from Welshman and owner of the Gay’s The Word bookshop Gethin Roberts in Matthew Warchus’s Pride (2014) to All of Us Strangers and now Ripley. But there is another not-so-positive side to this labelling. The BBC recently faced backlash following a BAFTA red carpet interview with Scott in which the reporter implied that Scott had seen Barry Keoghan’s genitalia and knew how big it was. Speaking about the slew of questions he incessantly faces about his sexuality in the press, Scott argues that ‘the problem is it becomes your schtick. Frankly, I feel like I’ve got just a bit more to offer than that.’

In fact, a running theme of many of Scott’s forays with the press is this sense of profound sincerity. Rather than sprinting through the Q&A format, Scott often asks back as many questions as he answers, and we can imagine the glint in his eye and half-smirk forming on his lips as he does so, feeling like he is breaking the rules of conventional stardom. He has maintained a certain boy-next-door energy; he even describes his dress sense as that of an ‘11-year-old’: scuffed trainers, colourful T-shirt, hoodie, and all. He has often expressed a desire to talk to his fans rather than be the object to their secret photos of him on the tube and in Tesco’s. Even though we must steer clear of the parasocial relationships that often plague such iconic figures as Scott, there is nonetheless an undeniable feeling that he lets us know him, just a little, and that little has become all-too-rare in the age of untouchable stardom and TikTok fame. Yes, he was GQ’s Man of the Year in 2023, and yes, he is an absolute fanboy of Taylor Swift. The two can coexist, he shows.

Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley in Steven Zaillian's limited series Ripley (2024). Courtesy of Philippe Antonello and Netflix.

Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley in Steven Zaillian’s limited series Ripley (2024). Courtesy of Philippe Antonello and Netflix.

Scott is a lover of art in whatever form. Despite turning down the art school offer, he frequently draws strangers in the tube and attends life-drawing classes. He is also interested in philosophy, gushing about his experience attending an Alain de Botton talk on loneliness and the importance of Esther Perel’s writing about relationships in his approach to acting and life itself. Discussing in an interview the eerie atmosphere of his Ripley shoot, which occurred between Italy and America during the pandemic, he veers into a conversation on the importance of art in the midst of loneliness, grief, and love. His words dig to the core of our own love affair with him and his plethora of relatable, human performances. ‘As human beings, we tell stories’, he says. ‘Expert storytellers are really vital. No, it’s not brain surgery. But, “Hearts starve as well as bodies. Give us bread, but give us roses.” I love that quote.’ It is through his storytelling that Andrew Scott has won our hearts. Our love story with him may have been a slow burn, but it’s only just beginning.

 

Miruna Tiberiu is the Editor-in-Chief of GAY45. She is a postgraduate in Film Studies at Cambridge University. Tiberiu has written for numerous publications, including The Cambridge Review of Books and the Cambridge Language Collective. She is the co-founder and co-editor of  Cambridge’s first all-queer magazine, Screeve. She was nominated for the International News Media Association (INMA)’s “30 Under 30” Awards in 2023. 

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