{"id":674615,"date":"2026-09-06T00:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T00:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/674615\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T00:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T00:26:14","slug":"andrew-scott-on-elsinore-and-his-go-to-movie-when-hes-sad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/674615\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Scott on ‘Elsinore’ and his go-to movie when he’s sad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TELLURIDE, Colo.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Do you believe in ghosts?<\/p>\n

Andrew Scott considers the question and looks at me with a mischievous grin, retreating to a corner of the restaurant booth where we\u2019re catching up a few hours before his new movie, \u201cElsinore,\u201d the most personal film he has ever made, premieres at the Telluride Film Festival. <\/p>\n

Scott turns over the question again. \u201cDo I believe in ghosts?\u201d<\/p>\n

It feels like a reasonable thing to ask. Three years ago at Telluride, the yearning romantic fantasy \u201cAll of Us Strangers\u201d memorably premiered, featuring Scott playing a character who worked through unresolved trauma by talking to the dead. Ghosts are elsewhere in his work, metaphorical (\u201cVanya\u201d) and literal (\u201cHamlet\u201d). <\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had a gun put to my head \u2014 which you don\u2019t have to \u2014 I would say that I don\u2019t believe in them,\u201d Scott says. \u201cBut the idea of the afterlife and where we will go is still really fascinating to me. Dreams and the subconscious, too. I don\u2019t know what went on consciously in the world outside my hotel room here last night. I was perfectly content to be asleep. And I like the idea of thinking about death that way. I\u2019ll just be asleep. It\u2019ll be OK. It\u2019s the undiscovered country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

\u201cThe movie for me is about time,\u201d says Andrew Scott. \u201cWhat are you going to do with your time? Ian decided to to live and to be a light and to be around people for the glory of the theater.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Anthony Dickenson \/ Focus Features)<\/p>\n

Dropping a line from Hamlet\u2019s \u201cto be or not to be\u201d soliloquy in this context feels unavoidable. In the powerfully moving \u201cElsinore,\u201d Scott plays the real-life actor Ian Charleson, who, as he was secretly dying from AIDS, played Hamlet in a 1989 Royal National Theatre production, still considered one of the great performances in London theater history. Charleson was 40 at the time, known for playing Scottish Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell in \u201cChariots of Fire.\u201d He died eight weeks after leaving the National Theatre stage. \u201cElsinore\u201d captures that journey in all of its glories and taxing challenges. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat he would go for treatment in the morning and then play this Olympian role is just endlessly moving,\u201d Scott says. \u201cI don\u2019t know how he did it.\u201d<\/p>\n

With our pint glasses filled with water as we adjust to Telluride\u2019s altitude, we try to figure it out.<\/p>\n

Charleson playing Hamlet, scaling the Everest for actors, reminded me of David Bowie making <\/b>\u201cBlackstar\u201d<\/b><\/a> as he was dying.<\/b> As an artist<\/b>,<\/b> you\u2019re not often given the chance to shape the narrative of your own end.<\/b><\/p>\n

Being offered Hamlet doesn\u2019t happen to every actor. To take it and turn it into something generous and useful \u2014 useful is a word I love about acting, that it\u2019s useful to people. <\/p>\n

When people are feeling down, they can watch a movie they love. <\/b><\/p>\n

And see themselves. That can\u2019t be underestimated. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s your go-to movie?<\/b><\/p>\n

I will always watch \u201cBridesmaids\u201d when it comes on TV. Comedy is precious to me. Laughing is precious to me. I don\u2019t see it as the antithesis of tragedy. I think they\u2019re one and the same. <\/p>\n

The last time we talked<\/b>,<\/b> around the time of \u201cRipley<\/b><\/a>,\u201d you wanted to put out into the universe the idea of starring in a musical or a comedy. That hasn\u2019t happened by the strictest definition. But you seem to be saying that genre labels don\u2019t matter. <\/b><\/p>\n

The reason, hopefully, that \u201cElsinore\u201d is moving is that we approach some of the stuff with quite a bit of lightness. The effect is tragic and there are some heavy things in it. But my job, what I prioritized, is keeping it light. <\/p>\n

You are <\/b>seen<\/b> dancing to <\/b>Ethel Merman\u2019s disco album<\/b><\/a>. It doesn\u2019t get much lighter than that. <\/b><\/p>\n

My favorite actors are the ones that are funny. I worked with Lisa Kudrow last year on \u201cThe Comeback,\u201d and yes, of course, she\u2019s very funny. But if you look at that performance she gives toward the end, it\u2019s so moving. People come away from things that are labeled comedies and go, \u201cI just laughed at that.\u201d Or people come away from things that maybe were really sad and say, \u201cI was just devastated by that.\u201d I think the job is to get rid of categorizing and make it more fluid. <\/p>\n

Like life. Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes<\/b>,<\/b> the bear, <\/b>he eats you<\/b><\/a>. <\/b><\/p>\n

Exactly! I don\u2019t love things that are overly serious. One of my big dreams for this film \u2014 and I do wish so much for this film because it\u2019s so personal \u2014 is that people don\u2019t feel like that they\u2019re going to see something that\u2019s depressing. I didn\u2019t want to fetishize Ian\u2019s death. <\/p>\n

What do you hope audiences take away from watching it?<\/b><\/p>\n

That they see themselves in it. You know, it doesn\u2019t end well for any of us. The movie for me is about time. What are you going to do with your time? Ian decided to to live and to be a light and to be around people for the glory of the theater. <\/p>\n

Speaking of time, next month you\u2019re going to be celebrating a milestone,<\/b> turning 50<\/b>. Or not celebrating. I don\u2019t know how you feel about birthdays. <\/b><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t love my birthday.<\/p>\n

Any year?<\/b><\/p>\n

My friends have said to me, \u201cYou gotta make some plans.\u201d I love a party. Which is to say, I love other people\u2019s parties. What I usually do is I leave it to the last minute and send texts around, saying, \u201cI understand if you don\u2019t want to come, but I might do this.\u201d And then you do something small. I read something yesterday where you should go to your own parties like you\u2019re a guest. I think that\u2019s a very good way to to do it. <\/p>\n

What about just being around for half a century? Is that in your head? You\u2019re the one who just said it doesn\u2019t end well for any of us. <\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve definitely thought about it more. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I\u2019ve thought, \u201cJesus, what?\u201d I\u2019m sure that\u2019s because of my mom dying and that I\u2019m approaching my mortality. Again, how am I going to use my time? One of the reasons I was so ferocious about getting \u201cElsinore\u201d made was that I would put all of myself into this and then maybe I can chill out a bit more.<\/p>\n

\"An <\/p>\n

Andrew Scott in the movie \u201cElsinore.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Anthony Dickenson \/ Focus Features)<\/p>\n

The personal aspects of this movie are striking. In addition to producing \u201cElsinore,\u201d <\/b>you yourself have <\/b>played Hamlet <\/b>on stage<\/b>. You\u2019re also a<\/b> gay actor portraying <\/b>someone<\/b> who, at the time, would have torpedoed his career by coming out. <\/b><\/p>\n

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the movies and would read Premiere and Empire magazine. Around 16 or 17, I started to realize that maybe if you\u2019re gay, you wouldn\u2019t be invited to movies. And I wasn\u2019t wrong in thinking that, because there weren\u2019t many examples. So I would omit things in interviews. I wouldn\u2019t lie, but I really understood that about Ian\u2019s generation. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a melancholy moment in the movie where he says, \u201cI wanted to be in the movies. I didn\u2019t scale the heights.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

What a gorgeous little dream. A young boy goes, \u201cI want to be in the movies.\u201d And then to have that knocked out of you bit by bit. You\u2019re not even going to be seen for the audition. Or, \u201cAre you being a little fruity there?\u201d<\/p>\n

Did people tell you not to talk about being gay?<\/b><\/p>\n

Very well-meaning people said to me, \u201cJust keep that [private] because you\u2019re not obviously gay,\u201d which I often think is such an insult to say to people. \u201cSo maybe you can get away with it.\u201d And I was like, OK. And I did that for awhile. But it was so insidious. When audiences think of acting, they think of actors pretending, like you\u2019re putting yourself in somebody else\u2019s shoes. So the fact that there was this whole section of gay actors who weren\u2019t allowed to do that is awful. I\u2019m so grateful that I get to do that. <\/p>\n

What do you remember about the late \u201980s and early \u201990s in terms of navigating the AIDS epidemic?<\/b><\/p>\n

It makes me emotional. It was extraordinary just to to have lived through that time and to be completely abandoned by your government, who wouldn\u2019t even say the name of the illness. When I was a young adult, that\u2019s what I was scared of. If you go for a sexual health screening, you go, \u201cMy God, am I going to die?\u201d I remember going into those situations, and with no cause for such concern, feeling like I\u2019m going to be punished for expressing myself in that way, because that\u2019s the way the world was set up.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get back to Ethel Merman<\/b>.<\/b> <\/p>\n

Please! [Laughs]<\/p>\n

There\u2019s that stanza in \u201cThere\u2019s No Business Like Show Business\u201d that goes: \u201cThere\u2019s no people like show people \/ They smile when they are low.\u201d Would you say that sums up the spirit of \u201cElsinore\u201d about as well as any couplet could?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s so much about the power of community and show people. It\u2019s about show people and smiling and getting on with the show.<\/p>\n

When did you first feel that power of community?<\/b><\/p>\n

Putting on \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d in a school play when I was about 10. <\/p>\n

What part did you play?<\/b><\/p>\n

Guess.<\/p>\n

Doro<\/b>thy?<\/b><\/p>\n

[Laughs] No, a friend of Dorothy. Oh, come on. One more guess.<\/p>\n

The <\/b>Cowardly Lion?<\/b><\/p>\n

No. The Tin Man. My mom sprayed me silver, in my hair and everything. We had a probably bit of aluminum foil and I had a funnel. I loved it so much. And I remember having a really extraordinary feeling of surprise, knowing the audience was there. For such a shy boy, when I had to do the big number, \u201cIf I Only Had a Heart,\u201d it went to another level, better than rehearsal. I suppose the little showman, the little 10-year-old silver showman, came out. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TELLURIDE, Colo.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Do you believe in ghosts? Andrew Scott considers the question and looks at me with a mischievous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[6054,35598,39929,434,1380,285064,18,257110,117,35938,285062,69243,285063,78944,14693,19,17,237,1093,17712],"class_list":["post-674615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-actor","tag-andrew-scott","tag-bit","tag-celebrities","tag-comedy","tag-dorothy","tag-eire","tag-elsinore","tag-entertainment","tag-ghost","tag-go-to-movie","tag-hamlet","tag-heavy-thing","tag-ian","tag-idea","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-people","tag-time","tag-way"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117221261172024529","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}