Andrew Scott, The Expert In Tortured Characters: ‘I Join Projects Because Of The Script’

Consciously, in what he himself calls “a healthily obsessive way,” Dublin-born Andrew Scott has built a career across film, television and theater by gravitating toward complex characters. In his hands, no role is ever banal or simple.

The meteorologist he plays in Pressure, which was released in the U.S. in May, is no ordinary scientist. Though based on real events, Scott turns the officer tasked with tracking anticyclones and storms ahead of D-Day, the Normandy landings, into a man who conceals, beneath a façade of inscrutable detachment, a tempest of emotions, a pressure cooker ready to explode.

“With this kind of character, it’s very important that there is as much emotional journey as possible and that the audience understands what motivates him,” Scott explains via video call. It is another entry in the filmography of an actor, which is an impressive catalogue of tortured souls.

Scott is amused by the irony that his character, a Scottish meteorological expert, makes his crucial decisions from the Allied headquarters in England, with only Dwight D. Eisenhower (played by Brendan Fraser), for support, experiencing the war from afar. Scott, by contrast, once set foot on those very beaches on screen, as one of the hundreds of faces seen in the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan (1998).

Although he had already won over British theater audiences, success on screen proved more elusive until 2010, when he was cast as Jim Moriarty in the BBC series Sherlock. That was the role that launched the Scott phenomenon. Today, he is one of the busiest actors in film and television.

“And that makes me feel exhausted [he laughs]… although grateful,“ he says. ”This season I’ve worked a lot, and I need to find a balance. I’ve just been on holiday these past days and I hope to catch my breath a bit more once this premiere [in Spain] is over.”

Over the years, Scott has built an unusually varied gallery of characters: the sexy priest in Fleabag, the sinister Tom Ripley in Steven Zaillian’s television adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, the Richard Rodgers of Blue Moon, the screenwriter aching for affection in All of Us Strangers, and C in the James Bond movie Spectre… and that is without even touching on his vast stage career. “I try not to repeat myself,” he says.

That is also why, having already appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, as well as playing military roles in 1917 and the series Band of Brothers, Scott was initially reluctant to take on another character in uniform. “For me, another Second World War film didn’t make sense unless it was for…”

That theme of responsibility, and of standing by difficult decisions in the face of opposition, was what first caught Scott’s attention. Pressure is about making and standing by unpopular decisions, defending them through reason rather than emotion, and exercising leadership “with humility and a sense of solidarity.”

“That’s what drew me to the project,” Scott says. “Because the script is full of connections to the present; for example, we lack that kind of leadership today. We need leaders who address our concerns rather than deny them. I mean, for example, climate change.”

His meteorologist, James Stagg, is “a man who isn’t afraid to stand by the truth, no matter who is standing in front of him, even when many people were asking him for a different answer.”

Scott describes his own research into the role: “There isn’t a great deal of information about the real Stagg, but I got the sense that he was a very direct person and deeply passionate about the weather. Like a lot of people today. While preparing for the film, I realized that people are fanatical about weather, and that the world can be divided into those who are fascinated by meteorology and those who aren’t,” he says with a laugh.

Laughing aside, he soon turns back to climate change. “You can’t be a human being — that is, a rational person — and deny global warming, which we as a species are responsible for. Let’s face the situation, well, we and our leaders.”

When Scott signed on for Pressure, the rest of the cast had not yet been hired. “I join projects because of the script. Do I care about my character? Yes, but I care even more about the script as a whole. And I like mixing genres and working in film and theater. Also, Anthony Maras’s previous work impressed me a lot.”

The Irish actor is fast finding himself back in the Oscar conversation. Not for Pressure, but for another of this season’s releases, Elsinore. In the film, Scott plays Ian Charleson, the actor best known for his role in Chariots of Fire. Charleson also gave a legendary performance as Hamlet at London’s National Theater during the final months of his life in 1989, after being diagnosed with AIDS. Scott is also a producer on the drama.

“I don’t know if it will be a new step in my screen career,” he says. “ But this project needed my drive, and I feel very connected to the film, the script, and Ian. I had already produced theater, so I knew the steps to take.”

When asked about a possible move to directing, Scott responds: “The truth is I’d like that. You have to wait for the right project, the right script…”

He pauses, then smiles mischievously: “Although I actually already have some ideas, and in the near future I need to act on them and take that step forward.”

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