Andrew Scott Live At The Everyman Soundtracking Film Club

Hello and welcome to another episode of Sound Tracking with me Edith Bowman where every week I take a dive into a conversation to celebrate the beautiful relationship between the moving image and music. Sometimes we have directors, sometimes we have writers, we have producers, we have actors and like last week we had a music supervisor. Thanks so much for all your lovely comments about Maggie Phillips conversation and her dog. It's really nice to shine a light on those wonderful creatives that are such an important part of the journey to what we experience when we watch it on the big or the small screen. Maggie has worked across both kind of extensively so it was really great to dive into a conversation with her. If you haven't listened to that yet then please do go and check it out. But our latest guest on Sound Tracking, I'm so excited to share this with you, is the wonderful actor Andrew Scott. Come on we all adore Andrew. He joined me in front of a live audience as part of our Everyman Soundtrack and Film Club to discuss the critically lauded Netflix series Ripley. The show is shot in black and white, it's dark, it's brooding, beautiful retelling of Patricia Highsmith's classic novel The Talented Mr Ripley in which Andrew delivers a performance as the titular anti-hero described by The Guardian's newspaper as absolutely spell binding and I have to agree. If I was to describe the show to you, it's very different from the film obviously and shouldn't really be compared because they're two completely, even though they're the same character, completely different interpretations of that story and this character. For me this show has got the most beautiful considered pace to it. If you were to place yourself in one of the world's most beautiful art galleries with the most fascinating and intriguing pieces of art and you were there alone and you were given as much time as you wanted to devour the art that is around that building and you were taken in the building and as well and you could hear those footsteps as you made your way through that building. That's what the show is like. It's got this fantastic pace that not only allows you to really savour aesthetically how beautiful it's being shot but also just to, I don't know, it kind of really heightens the drama and the tension in the show as well. I loved it. Ripley is scored by Geoff Russel and we'll begin with his cue Dickey by Day. Andrew Scott everybody! Sorry, that took a while. That was worth waiting for. I didn't realise. We're just warming them up for the right level of cheer for you. Thanks for being here. Oh thanks for having me, thanks. So you watched 1, 2, 3? 3, yeah, 1, 2, 3, yeah. So you just finished on the boat? Dark as hell. It's so cinematic though Andrew. It just worn, it'd been seen on the big screen. Yeah it does. It's Robert Ellsworth who is the DP for a lot of Paul Tom Sanderson movies and movies and lots of other incredible movies. He's a complete genius. Is it different shooting in black and white? Not really. We didn't know whether we'd be allowed to have it in black and white at the time. It was with Showtime and Steve Zalion always wanted to shoot it in black and white but they didn't know whether television audiences would accept that or whether executives would accept it. So we, they had a sort of contingency plan so we, there were two monitors always on set, one in black and white and one in a kind of more muted colour. It was never going to be like, you know, saturated in colour but they always hoped that it would be in black and white but not necessarily. Yeah you can't imagine it being anything else. You see it, absolutely. Yeah well the worry is people do get put off by black and white a little because there's never been, yeah people, people do. Not people here. Clearly not. Not a classy bunch here but yeah I think, I think some people do and that's, you know, just something you're just going to have to sacrifice because he had a really, really strong vision that it was going to be black and white and he saw it really, he wanted it to be a real film noir and also you know there's been so many famous iterations of the story, you know, with the Antony Mungala film and the Alan DeLong one and so he just saw it in this very particular way. It feels like the kind of time that we need to give this character because he's such a fascinating individual and you know when we watch this we spend so much time with you with him. Yeah. I don't know your eyes, it's a really lovely nice but a lot of time with myself too. So we spend so much time but so much that time he spends alone as well. These great scenes that you have with Al, with Johnny and stuff are fantastic but when you're on your own as well we're still being told so much of the story through, yeah, through him. Yeah. I think what's kind of quietly sort of revolutionary about this as a limited series is that we watch television in a completely different way than we used to and the pacing of it is so specific and kind of unusual and arresting for people and I think it sort of teaches the audience to watch television the way you might read a novel which is what the intention of having an eight-hour version of it because you don't really binge a novel a lot of the time. You know you don't sit down and go I gotta get this, oh let's just read another chapter, you do a little bit but you might do four chapters or you might do two. It'd be kind of unusual to sit down and read a whole book although of course we do that sometimes. So this idea that you can sort of sit down and spend a real quality amount of time with one character is quite unusual because if you go, if you think in the first person in a book you can spend as much time as you like with a character and you hear the machinations of his mind and my question was like how do you represent that sort of cinematically, you know, how do you and the only thing you can really do is to spend as much time as possible with them and not apologize and I love in a novel when you kind of go off-center there can be something that like a description of something for over six pages and you just go, you sort of turn left into a little maze and then you come out of it again and that's what the attempt is here but yeah it was very unusual to spend so much time as an actor on your own. You know you really do, in a movie, I've done it a lot in a movie which takes maybe two months but this we shot over a year and yeah it's a long time on your own and of course it was bits with Dakota and bits with Johnny and bits with everybody else but I did find that hard and I think it is unusual. I've got the wrong fanning sister, I said Elle didn't I? Oh Jesus, it's got my fannings missed out. You've fucked out your fannings. I'm sorry. I'm gonna get that on a t-shirt. Don't fuck with the fannings. But a year, it took a year. If you think about a TV series, they're usually about at least a couple or a family or a police department or a hospital or something. There's usually a group of people so it's not usually about sort of one person so that kind of relentless amount of time is quite unusual in a TV series because I was desperately trying to think of another actor who would have acted as much as I was about to act. I knew going into it was like just being on a film set every day for 12-13 hours, every day for a year, it's too much acting We got to the end of it. I did. We got to the end of it was like two weeks and then you were straight into all of us strangers or something. It was delayed for loads of reasons. It was kind of towards the end of the pandemic and I was due to start all of us strangers and I just didn't want to give up that job. And actually it was quite a good thing because I was back in London and it was a completely different vibe. I was getting the jubilee line up to Wembley where we shot the home. We're shooting in Croyd and you know it's different, very different to this in a completely different way. It was cool. It was actually, you know, it was great. It was great. Talk about that in a second but quickly I wanted to talk about music in Ripley because music is kind of ever present within the show that we watch and I wasn't sure how much you were kind of privy to that while shooting or whether Steve kind of gave you an insight into elements of it. I mean there's some brilliant kind of recurring songs like Quando, Quando, Quando that kind of comes up in different episodes, repeats and stuff. So clever music. Yeah, it's beautiful. [Music] [Music] Actually the thing that I think is quite singular about this is that it's not overscored. I quite like that. I quite like in that scene on the boat particularly and there's some scenes later. I don't know if many people have seen the rest of it but I won't spoil it. It doesn't get lighter. But yeah, actually I think it's quite noticeably quiet. It's kind of like sometimes the absence of score and the subtlety of a score like the creaking of the boat and just things that perhaps we aren't aware of as an audience but that he's really incredibly detail-oriented. You can tell it's really he's got a real attention to the senses of things because it's even like the footsteps across cobbles or the waves on the canal and all that kind of stuff is really like it's cranked up in the mix but it's to kind of really it's the atmosphere that it creates as well. Yeah, it's exactly the atmosphere. He was really obsessed and we've had a lot of conversations about what it would be like to be Tom Ripley rather than to imagine what it's like to be a victim of Tom Ripley and that's what her great achievement, Patricia Highsmith, who's considered one of the greatest crime writers of all time is that she makes you root for him even though he's doing these terrible terrible things and that's what the that's what the challenge of it is that you feel oh god you know and as the story progresses you you're kind of hoping that he gets away with it even though you actually he's a very hard character I found to access in a way because he's kind of unknowable but you know those people deserve people who are unknowable and uncomfortable. I think they can make very fascinating screen characters and you know those kind of people exist in the world and they you know they they're worth representing too. I think sometimes they can be really fascinating people because the idea that he is a he's our hero but he's an unreliable hero I think is a really interesting one. Did you do much prep for this what was apart from learning Italian brilliantly? Oh stop it. I did I did I spent about three or four months learning learning Italian and that was intimidating. I'm not a great one for it. It sounds like I always find this a difficult one because I don't want people to think that I you know lazy. But I just have the ability to rock up aren't you? Yeah just rock up I'm always on time and I know I'm really obsessed about the script I'm really scripted is the is the real Bible but I don't tend to find sometimes I find it just as interesting to know nearly as much as the audience knows and so that the most thing the thing that's the most important is that you're present on the day and you're reacting to what's actually happening rather than carrying a huge amount of of sort of sort of baggage with you. So I absolutely my prep I suppose is to to know the script really really well I know the script and you I always know the script backwards from beginning to end and we're very lucky on this one because if you're doing a TV series you might get the first couple of episodes and then you go you're halfway shooting it I know it hasn't happened to me but I know with a lot of friends of mine that they go into something and they're given the first two episodes and they think this is sort of great high standard stuff and then the quality goes down I think this is completely preposterous and you're like I would never would have done that in episode one and then this is gonna how you know what I mean whereas this we had all eight episodes I knew what was going to happen and so you have to mark it out what how particularly in a character like this because he's he you know he starts to become he starts to embody Mr. Green took a greenleaf so it's there's no point in making the journey in any story to go from A to F you want to go from A to Z so you want to start as far away from from Z as possible I think so you know yeah so with that you have to have the map you know you have to sort of go okay well I'm not going to play any of that so that you can bring it out late later on you know what I mean did you have that with Sherlock yeah interesting because Sherlock in some ways is very different because he's the antagonist and this is the protagonist and so people have asked me you know they're both kind of villainous characters and like I wouldn't call Tom really really a villain because he's the protagonist and he's um he's a hero and he's an anti-hero I definitely can see that he's an anti-hero but your job just when there's just frankly just so much of your face you have to it can't all just be one note and sometimes it's easier when you pop up in your Moriarty and you've got these fantastic scenes and actually my interest in that when I was on that show was to be in it less you don't want the most powerful character to you want to get some you know want to get good bang for your buck so you don't want to be in the background you always want to have an incredible entrance or less lines or everything you say to be sort of as powerful and as iconic as possible so it's a completely different it's just different it's playing a completely different note in the orchestra do you know what I'm saying yeah absolutely I love as well and listen if you haven't seen the next episode of Ripley there's a brilliant use of Shanaid O'Connor's Silent Night in it which is just absolutely absolutely amazing use of that and that's what's really clever I think about about the music in it is the is it doesn't it's not stamped with a with a time yeah yeah sleep we're strained to Steve's big man for you know that's what that's what he wants as much I like that because you don't think that looking at it yeah you know what I mean it's kind of that's so clever yeah everything goes on at the screen yeah everything absolutely and he um you know you have all this of course because we didn't shoot it in black you know I wasn't looking at these incredible vistas in Italy in black and white it was like wow and so to be able to have those huge amount of ingredients to go I'm not actually choosing to use that incredibly beautiful sky it's it's pretty it's audacious it's it's certain to you it's certainly visionary whether people go for that or not it's definitely visionary and I think we need a bit more of that on television you know whether people because it's obviously it divides people and you have to take the risk that people go oh I would have liked it this way and you know or I black and white might put some people off so god bless the people who you know support that kind of work because that's how you that's how you make you know very singular work what was your first day on all of those strangers what did you shoot the first day was uh let me just think of the first day because it's always so nerve-wracking is probably putting it out of my head oh the first thing was with James so we did well I did I did all the stuff in the house with Jamie Bell and Claire Foy we did all that stuff for maybe two and a half weeks so it was like a little mini childhood and then I went and did all the stuff with Paul so we shot it all in that little in the in the little house in Croydon and then I had to say goodbye to when it was so sad because we we just bonded so much because the stuff is so so affecting and uh yeah that was my first day and we knew and we all knew actually kind of immediately that it was yeah because you don't know for those of you who don't know all of us strangers it's about a man who who sort of remits his parents 30 years after they've died and so Claire Foy and Jamie Bell who were younger than me played my my parents and we didn't do anything to sort of add like a weird ghostly glow to them or anything it was just like hello mum and we didn't know if that would just be stupid or not it just didn't it just it just immediately just immediately worked in Andrew's old house yes so the we shot and Andrew's Andrew Hagar director's former child at home and I just kept thinking is this not fucking weird because it's like a tiny little suburban house you know like a really small I just like that conversation of kind of goes up to do going hi excuse me but let's see what he did that's what he did yeah he knocked on the door and he was like hello I used to live here could we film can we and he was delighted because he was worried that they put in some horrible conservatory or something that didn't make it look like the 80s you know what I mean and they hadn't they'd left it pretty they'd left it pretty pretty much the way it was but like tiny which and you know usually when you're filming you you might do something like that in a studio space so the cameras have a huge amount of time to give you a huge amount of space to move you know it was very intimate such an incredible experience I'm so proud of both the process and the and the product of that of that you know thing because that film is really really effective people across across the world really those films are are really important it felt like a really special film when I saw at the first time and one that I've gone back to one that's really I think I said to you the last time that I spoke to you that I found myself having having dreams I went back and I spent time with my granddad I don't think that I'll have that beautiful companionship for so many people for years to come yeah I think that's it I think it's it's just a very simple idea what would you say how would you speak to your parents if they if they were the same age you know you are now or more or less the same age you know because we never see your parents like that and that's beautiful and I like the fact that it crosses you know it's a film that you know there's a there's a gay romance at the centre of it but it's not that's not it's only attribute that so many people can can relate to it and I like that I feel that feels progressive in relation to how we you know in our yeah storytelling I heard you do um I watched that brilliant actors and actors that you did with Gretta Lee and one of the things I loved about that conversation was the way that she spoke to you about how the film depicted fallen in love and I feel like that there's so many things about that film that I love and that is another element to it is in terms of like fallen in love is not the kind of perfect oh the way that it's depicted on screen most of the time is that it's this kind of like Instagram filter yeah and it's like but this was kind of really real and there was just something just absolutely gorgeous about that well thank you yeah yeah feel very proud of that and it's just a beautiful thing to get to to play you know and with you know with somebody is as wonderful as Paul and it's just every part of that worked it really did so um yeah I'm very proud of it because there's brilliant scenes in the film both you know in the club but also when you're in the flat playing music watching old Top of the Pops and all that kind of stuff and sometimes you find that thing I think now where where our pieces of music are within film or TV and they almost take ownership of them so that every time you hear them now you think of that and so with the Frankie goes to Hollywood power of love all I think about now is that and it's beautiful because it just reminds me of the film but were was music being played yes yeah yeah yeah well the pet shop boys were a big part because we sing it in the movie and the power of love which is something that Andrew Hague the director just wanted at the very he had this image that this extraordinarily beautiful song and he had this idea that you know the film was quite indie and quite gritty but he had this idea that he had this image of these two lovers at the very end and he wanted this famous kind of gay love song to play and he wanted these two boys to sort of go up into the stars and for their love story to be as epic and as take its place amongst the stars as alongside all the other types of love stories along with this huge swelling beautiful beautiful song so it was very really courageous that it always moves me that that's what he wanted that's what he wanted and didn't want to move on and that's why we need those great artists you know to say I'm not I'm not gonna I have this image and that's and I'm going to I'm gonna be ferocious and going after it you know I'll protect you from the hooded claw keep the vampires from your door dreams are like angels they keep at it baby love is the light scaring darkness away I'm so in love with you make the way combined with Emily's beautiful score as well she crafted for us again score is so important we saw an early an early screening of it Paul and I they showed they showed it and there was a different score to it slightly slightly and it really did the difference is how how music gently guides you or brings you in or it's such a tool it really is really is you musical do you play anything no I don't play I don't play any any instruments now I heard you say though because it's lovely I was watching you talk about being a kid and I remember this like on the Saturday afternoon you'd watch like the bill's be that old movie that will be on the telly and that kind of musicals whether it was like the swimming synchronized swimming absolutely these huge spectacles yeah incredible they should do more they should do what you do wear those things on the hat you want to be in a musical I do I sure do I need to shut up about that I said so desperate no you don't you really don't yeah because I was thinking about that like oh and then I remember that Tom Holland's in a most supposedly being in a film about Freddy's stare yeah and I was like oh my god that would be amazing that would be something special how's your tap dancing I learned I learned I'll do whatever you want me to do but yeah that's the all that stuff I feel like I always wanted to do was just lots of different genres that to me seems to be like the fun of being an actor to do lots of different completely different things so my musicals is not I sang a tiny bit in the last play in Vanya the last play that I was in and I kind of loved it I loved it so but it was it was only small it was a little small man singing you want to do big man singing I want to give it a go everyone's going to be bitterly disappointed but like I don't necessarily think I don't necessarily think great musical acting has to be like about having full voice necessarily just have to be able to interpret the song and be able to have a bit of a musicality so excuse me making excuses but talking about different genres and stuff a film that I loved that you were in was Kath and Col Bardi oh thanks yeah yeah I love that film so much Lena Dunham yeah if anyone has a scene it's a really beautiful it's so great yeah it's really she's she's a magical person you know I just saw another I knew film that she's just done that she's in with um Stephen Frye yes yeah yeah yeah she she was very funny about that Lena is a completely magical person I think people don't really well maybe they do I don't know but her sets are just fantastic places to be and what you want as an actor is you want somebody to be completely enabling so that there's a lot of improvisation that she encourages even though she's a really extraordinary kind of wordsmith she just encourages you so you feel like you're you're playing the whole time I loved you and Bella together that's just so great you're Bella Ramsey yeah yeah Bella Bella's just a force of nature yeah yeah and girls you know by Lena Dunham is just this is extraordinary it's one of those things that I was reminded about a couple of weeks ago and I was like I'd actually really like to go back and watch it through yeah from the start yeah I think people are doing that now having a rewatch I think it's that thing of kind of like at the time you're just kind of so in it that kind of going back and yeah almost having lived a bit more of a life as well exactly it captures a certain certain something that's just completely authentic and all the people that I really love the collaborators that I really love are people who are real wordsmiths you know like really really understand the power of of language and that's that's kind of I don't it's something I've said before but I don't think you can make a really great movie out of a mediocre script I think the script has to be have some real strong kind of autograph on it does that work the same with you with music then because I think when it comes to music you either you're a melody person or you're a lyrics person you're a lyrics person I think I'm a lyrics person yeah yeah I do yeah I definitely do I want to ask as well about theatre because theatre is such you mentioned Vanya it's such a important part of your journey and it feels really important to you for it to be to be almost on the horizon of it always to be something there that you're getting back to that stage to that opportunity what does it feed you what does it give you what do you love about theatre there's no doubt like when you make a film you might shoot on a good day you might shoot maybe six or seven minutes a day you know you don't you know because you have to cover everybody you know you have to to do your clothes and my clothes so we were filming this scene we'd have to set this up we'd have to do a wide shot we'd have it takes a long time and there's a lot of repetition so your your imagination naturally is going to be constantly interrupted you're not shooting in sequence you're shooting scene 67 because we can get the location first for you know whereas when you go into the theatre you start right at the very beginning everybody's completely focused the lights are down and so you are the chief storyteller and so there's something about that thrill and the child like just very primitive way of storytelling that I find um enthralling and I also love the fact that I don't have to ever see it because I hate do you oh my god I can't stand it I can't stand and I'm getting I'm getting worse like I would never be able to watch what I saw this I saw this oh shit before no no no no no no no I I can I can sort of recognize uh I think not fully I find it very hard and ripply because there was no escaping if I could watch if like for example Catherine called birdie or you're playing a supporting character and Bella's in it like oh god that scene is completely wonderful so you have a break from looking at your you know your face well you know we all most of us don't like you know when you see a photograph of yourself you think oh god I don't look like that people like that's gorgeous of you yeah don't ask me to like to look when you get like contact sheets still and you're like which one oh absolutely horrific awful that's the thing that you have to do in movies they they send you and it's one usually the first one of the first things you see you haven't seen the film yet and they said they send you a contact sheet of the stills photography and you think oh god this is going to be dreadful I just had it the other day and you have to choose you know the best of a bad lot I always say that it's like when you hear your your voice on someone else's answering machine you think please tell me I don't sound like that we used to have to do snoop sessions on the radio where when you started doing a radio show you would do snoop sessions with the boss which would be the show with all the music taken out just you talking and they'd play it and then you'd stop after every link and they go so then oh right and you like critique every link that you did by the end of it you were like sobbing on the floor I'm never working again they say to you they say that was a bit yeah so it is a bit slow we need to pick up the page don't be a really really regional that's what I get to do you well because they used to sort of rather love all the sort of you know terribly terribly partial and now you know it's a surprise I've got a job to be honest exactly they don't mind us now they've let us in oh yeah regional sexy maybe not um yes it is it is that's such a funny part of the world though of having to kind of remove yourself as well there's got a very strange yeah it's so weird and sometimes when you have to go in and do post-syncing which is where you have to match because there might have been a lawnmower or something in the background I don't know why a lawnmower in Italy but like you know what I mean a post let's call it a post lawns yeah and so you have to go and you have to re-record your dialogue and what they call an ADR session or post post-syncing session and it's always horrific you've now you haven't seen the film and they're like first of all there are pains to tell you that it's not because your performance is dreadful it's because there's a technical error but you always think it is because of you they just want you to and then you go in and there's a there's a first the first thing you see is a screen grab of your face it's like a huge and you think oh yeah and then they make you and then they make you re-record something that is you know if we were to re-record what we've just said the idiosyncratic way that people speak and then the worst thing that you have that you ever have to do is if you've done a sex scene which is you know embarrassing enough but to do a sex scene just matching just when you're sitting in your clothes in november you know seven months later with 12 people in a booth and someone's going to be doing any snacks and you're like no no thanks just get this over with it's much actually much worse it's actually much worse getting notes on that as well yeah yeah exactly pick up the pace pick up the pace sweaty exactly that is literally the kind of yeah that's the kind of stuff you go yeah it's amazing yeah yeah it's such and the more i think about it the more i think what a fucking weird thing to do with everything being an actor like sometimes it's still it's still um it still hits me sometimes this is so weird what i'm doing i mean it's great but it's it's it's a it's a it's an odd way to spend your life never until the moment exactly if i was to um i'm not going to sing it to you but if i was to sing didos white flag what does it make you think of that makes me think immediately of the fox in fleabag i love this story the reason it does is that we shot the final scene of fleabag which takes place in a bus stop in the middle of london so we were on a night shoot and so it was about two o'clock in the morning and there was this fox that was employed like a professional i bet he doesn't have to do adr sex noises probably doesn't exactly oh i don't like foxes sex noises or it's sinister enough yeah we don't even repeat in that but whatever you're having yourself but anyway we were we were um waiting for this fox and the fox you know it's a trained fox because it has to do a particular thing and you can't just look get any random foxes you see you know we're just waiting around waiting for one so we were waiting for this fox and then the fox's agent or handler or whatever it is says the fox is very sensitive and the fox was in this kind of fox trailer like a little like you know like a what to call them like a carrier thing yeah cage but it was very sensitive and the way this this fox had been trained was that it would only emerge from the cage if it hurt i won't go down with this ship by dido whatever the white flag it's not like i don't know where that started i won't go down so we all had to be really sensitive and we were literally behind they're like don't look at them don't look at them don't look at them oh so we were sort of behind this thing and they press play this is two o'clock in the morning in the middle of like i don't know like shepherd's bush or somewhere i won't put my hand up and then the fox then came out and then the fox did not actually behave very well so they didn't end up you even using the fucking fox that's amazing it's not extraordinary uh poor old dito dito yeah oh man she deserved that jeez you think that i shouldn't still love you i'll tell you that but if i didn't say it well i'd still have felt it where's the sense in that i promise i'm not trying to make your life harder i'll return to where we were but i will go down with this ship and i won't put my hands up and surrender there will be no white flag above my tongue i'm in love no way did you have a name did you give him a name okay not the fox the priest oh the priest oh sorry i thought you meant the fox yeah either yeah um michael j no i didn't didn't give the priest a name well i always find really extraordinary it kind of goes back to what we were talking about about backstory or prep or biography or all those things actually what you need to make really great drama is not is not is not very much you know we don't know fleabags name or alevee coman's character is called godmother and so this sort of beautiful love story between these two people we don't know either of their names it could still exist it's amazing what you know the most important thing i always think this when you're making something is that there's a lot a liveness between the two people no matter you know even when we're in a restaurant and you see two people you know having an argument about something it allows the observer to to create their own their own story a little so sometimes having all that kind of stuff you know for some actors it's incredibly useful but for me it isn't because then it means that you're just prioritizing the aliveness and and what what phoebe is incredible at is creating that atmosphere on set and lina actually as well just that thing where you go over here now the most important thing because sets could be very intimidating places and where the concern can be about so many different things the lighting the you know whether there's traffic having to be stopped at a particular time so many so many different departments are are at work and you know the the the chief priority can sometimes be we have to complete the call sheet we have to get we got to get this done before the light goes or whatever so you have to be able to have somebody who is going yeah but we have to capture this magic because we don't have between action and cut if we don't have this sort of chemistry between people then we don't have anything and that's what the audience wants to see so you have to be you have to forget about everything introduce the film acting seems to me so much about blocking out so much stuff so that you can imaginatively go somewhere that could be so far where where you're from if you're doing a period drama if you're in a complete completely different emotional state you know than than the set is so you know if we're doing that all of a strangers scene at the end where the parents are dying you're shooting that in the middle of a shopping centre and it's a chirpy crew was in the middle of the summer everybody's happy and so you have to be able to go my job I'm not saying that you have to be like everybody be quiet all the time but I can understand why people sometimes say we have to be thinking about the audience and that has to take priority and sometimes a director might have to say look everybody calm down on the set even though of course everybody wants it to be convivial but our job our first priority is to serve the is to serve the the people beyond this the bigger picture is that the way you say thank you to the waitress when she comes across to the table oh yeah saying so much in one word yeah yeah yeah well those cinematic moments are there sometimes they're just the simplest ones are they yeah I've got your present oh my god I didn't get you anything it's a silly present you can open it now please because it's got purpose it's a house and I hope you'll actually use it actually because it's quite fun and you know as an actor you travel quite a lot I got your travel clue do there's method in my madness knives out oh yes knives out yes I mean could they add any more actors to this list of people that are going to be involved in the next knives out film it's so exciting and they're going to oh fellow Irishman just announced yes Darrell yes yeah yeah I mean it's I mean I love I love these films they're just you know talk about kind of giving actors license to play and have fun yeah and the way that Daniel has run with this character is so great yeah and kind of so refreshing I think as well and then bringing these kind of you know this mix of characters it's just it's so new yeah even though it's a such an old untested joy like there's these kind of who done it films and actually even the um the announcing of the cast has kind of it's become a thing of like crazy about it yeah people are speculating like this and blah blah blah that's pretty old school as well again that's another thing that I think oh wow I'd love to be in one of those kind of things and you are and you can't talk about it yeah not really not really yeah but yeah he's very very clever and you know it's very actor-led and we kind of quite a lot of group scenes which is always fun because for some reason with Ripley and I did a one-man play last year I thought it's been a kind of shortage of actors so I love actors so it's always fun to be sort of in group scenes because you know yeah you know when we did Pride you know that was so fun because there was just always it was about lots of groups of people and so it was just brilliant it was just so so incredibly incredibly fun what informs your decisions I don't know you're looking for something you know you're talking about you want to work with with kind of ensembles and yeah lots of actors you edit is it that kind of thought out or no I wouldn't say it's that thought out but I would say that there's a couple of things number one is that you go you want to do something slightly different than you've just sort of done so you think oh god I don't want to be so I've done quite a lot of sad things quite recently um so I'd like to do something now like you know Knives Out is is not sad unless you die um for some people that might not be not might be sad true true sorry he says yeah diplomatically and um yeah and um yeah so you want to do that but I always think you have to I think to have no jokes in anything is bad manners I really genuinely do not to if his script doesn't have if his script is really really serious I don't find it attractive because I don't think that's the way human beings are but we're certainly the ones that I'm interested in I think the best thing about human beings is that even on our at our worst on our worst time we always look to the light and I think that's our job is to reflect what it's like to be a human being and I think finding light is always very is always very moving so I like I like gags yeah go jokes and scripts so that's what I would say I would look for when you talk about as well like being a real wordsmith and being words are the thing for you are you writing you know in terms of if you got kind of aspirations to kind of be on that other side of it in terms of creating yeah I do and and more and morevania was something that we you know we created together and um yeah it it is I I have got enormous respect for writers and a lot of my people that I love in my life are you know real geniuses at writing so I'm intimidated by it I'm not intimidated when I'm not the chief writer I'm like no we don't need to say that or maybe that and so I have real respect for it and I love to be involved whether I would I don't I think perhaps you need a very strong story musical perhaps perhaps I'm like oh god Jesus no Jesus no no that's not that's not you and Ashlyn B should write a musical together oh god but she's so clever she would be able to do that I would be able to be on the side tough and alive I'd watch that ever you want that yeah for sure you're easily pleased to come on well no I'm not at all I'm not well yeah I guess I am and what is next what are we seeing you in next um what's coming this is the Cameron Dears and Jamie Foxx oh yeah yeah yeah back to the foxies back to back to foxes yeah yeah oh yeah yeah wonder if he likes Dido uh Jamie Foxx yeah oh what do you say let's put it a show of hands but yeah back in action that's coming out soon so Cameron Dears has been out of action yeah and now she's back in action see what they're doing yeah I think they probably did yeah that's coming out later in the year I've only got a little little a little bit in that it's an action film I like it yeah it's action again it's another thing I hadn't really done very much action and I always say about Ripley that you know that boat scene I mean I'm still getting over it I mean there was no all that was you know the thing where you have to bury the boat they just kept the cameras running until I buried that boat that wasn't like he was like well you know you just keep going until the boat sinks and you can I think it's kind of quite a pleasing shot where you see all the water filling in and you see it sinking yeah so you just have to be in there in the middle of the in the middle of the wow keep going Andrew I thought you were talking to someone else I was like yeah I know I was just like that's what is shouting about the still filming Cameron's still running keep fishing keep going yeah that's literally and you know you know picking up the rocks and falling in and trying to get into a boat from the sea when you've done 40 takes of something you know you're it's it is generally it's generally exhausting so it felt like an action thing to me yeah and we've probably got time for five minutes to do a couple of audience questions if if anybody has any questions right in the middle there was straight up with the first hand so I'm gonna go sorry Amy right in the middle and then actually once you've done if you could pass your mic forward to the young lady there yeah go hi hi congratulations on Ripley are you guilty of producing something that is too good for TV given our response to it in the cinema that's not a question for me to answer am I am I uh well I don't know I it does feel like it's quite cinematic I don't know maybe just people should just people have big TVs though don't they good answer yeah I think I think um I like the fact that it it's got very high standards visually and like I think maybe some more um TV could learn a bit from that because you know there's no reason because we're in the golden age of television why it can't look sensational so um I hope I'm guilty yeah hello hello Andrew I'm Sasha nice to meet you um my question is so obviously you've had quite a long career I know you had your correct me if I'm wrong because you probably know better than I do but you had your professional debut in a film at 17 and then you went to uni to study drama and then you like dropped out and you you went to a theater in Ireland yeah and then you moved to London yeah um I just wanted to ask or like if you could tell us a bit about the journey of your career and what that's been like because currently I'm trying to get like my foot in the door and it doesn't seem like there's a right way to do it and it can be quite frustrating so that's my first question and secondly like how do you keep the momentum of keeping on trying to pursue your dream where it's like you can apply for things like hundreds of times and it's like if you don't get anything back keeping constant yeah not the first thing I would say to you about so-called you know successful actors is that it everything you know history is told backwards so so that you go okay well that looks great so you did that we dropped out a thing and then and then you joined the abbey theater and then you moved to London and you got a job and then that's what they write about retrospectively and of course what happens after you drop out of university is you think fuck I don't know I have no idea what's going to happen and then something happens because that's the way life is so sometimes I think the way successful actors careers or paths are reported there's a kind of falsity to it a little you know so that just to understand that every single actor working no matter how successful they are they are have had at some point where they go I have absolutely no prospects I have no idea what's going to happen and I'd say one of the things that you have to learn and embrace in some ways is that feeling is that and with experience you go well I have been here before and it still happens it really does happen because even when you're at a certain stage it I suppose it becomes about not just employment but about what what how do you keep a standard high rather than just what happens at the very beginning is you kind of you're just trying to get as much experience as possible so I would just say is to try and get used to the fact that you don't know what's going to happen next and something will always emerge and to listen to your own your own voice as much and that's I think it's quite a good way I think it's quite a good life lesson I remember during the pandemic when everybody who are very very regimented lives where where everything is planned out and they have a pension and they're working and a lot of people that I know who have those lives were really really struggled and a lot of the actors I know were like well it's just a Tuesday morning at 11 o'clock you have to try and cultivate your own day you know you've you've got it you've got it you've got to be self-motoring and that can be quite difficult depending on how how your spirit is you know and if you get you know knocks that that's hard it's hard to that's really difficult but what I would say is that the reason that people are cast are is so for so many different reasons it's not necessarily always to do with your talent they're looking at it they're looking at a whole so when they're casting knives out they have to look at so many different types of things and requirements and how that person might look alongside that person they've to you know there's there's lots of different things that aren't necessarily to do with you I think it's awful actors don't sometimes get feedback when they go for auditions I think it's really outrageous actually because in most people when most people apply for a job they can find out at least that they weren't successful and I think it's really awful what what they do now is they ask actors to learn 11 pages of dialogue you know they have to take time off work whatever work they're doing to survive and you have to learn sometimes you do this three or four times a week 11 pages of dialogue you self-tape you don't get any direction as to what the person might be wanting and that's sometimes actors need to go oh you want you want that person to be darker okay well I can do that but if you don't know you're just literally spending so much time and effort and you put it out and you don't even hear whether you got that you read it in in the paper I just think that's that has to change in our industry I really really really do and I understand there's a little that you have to that people have to you know you don't sometimes always have a an immediate answer but I think that's very um debilitating for that reason you know it can be it could be hard so it is tough it is tough but it's also a completely wonderful I think very honorable thing to do with your life we wish you all the best and we hope to see you up here at some point as well doing the same thing yeah you can come on my musical I don't know if you can do that but I can teach you um listen we run out of time but it's so great to to have all of you guys here tonight thank you for giving up your Friday nights yes thank you so much and thank you so much for being here oh you're so welcome my pleasure thanks for thanks for watching and excited for Knives Out and the musical as well thank you thank you for this beautiful thank you thank you so much everybody thank you thank you that's so so so from the score to Ripley that Sicily variation rounding off this latest episode of soundtracking with the fabulous Andrew Scott my huge thanks to Andrew to also to his team to the wonderful gang at Everyman and to all of you who came along to support this particular film club we have got quite a few we were taking a little break over the next couple of months just because uh it's a busy time with summer with everybody but we'll be back back hopefully august time and I'll make sure that I let you know ahead of that who that's going to be and then we've got loads planned between now and the end of the year Ripley if you haven't already watched it is available to watch on Netflix right now and I highly recommend that you do now as well as being able to find us the podcast wherever you get your pods we have a great search feature at edithbomen.com so do have a look at that if you haven't already there's there's about 450 episodes for you to dive into and if you aren't already please find us at soundtrackinguk on your socials we also have a youtube channel called soundtracking extra that we would love for you to subscribe to because as well as putting lovely versions of the podcast up there we also have fantastic little extra bits and bobs as well that we do next up we have another deep dive into the beautiful relationship of film and music I very much look forward to the pleasure of your company you