Irish actor Andrew Scott was wary of taking on the role of murderous grifter Tom Ripley. After all, the anti-hero at the centre of Patricia Highsmith’s best-selling novels had been portrayed on screen no less than five times, most notably by Matt Damon in The Talented Mr Ripley. But Steve Zaillian’s script for an eight-part Netflix drama series convinced Scott that Ripley still had more to offer.
“There’s been a few iterations of the story over the years, but Steve had a very particular vision for the story. And I think the opportunity to write it and to tell the story in long form television was a really interesting dynamic for him,” says Scott.
“He had a very strong vision that he wanted it to be in black and white. And I think the idea that the black and white can be married in some way to the way he wanted to teach the audience how to watch this story in a very particular way, was very similar to the way we might read a novel.”
Still, Damon’s 1999 take on Ripley loomed large.
“It was a concern. When you hear about a project like this, you think, ‘is that going to be a remake in some way?’ Or, ‘what’s the point in aping someone else’s already successful work?’ But right from the beginning, I knew that was completely the opposite intention of Steve as our writer director,” says the actor who co-stars with Dakota Fanning and Johnny Flynn, who take on the roles portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law in the 1999 film.
Thus, Scott would become the sixth actor to portray Ripley, following in the footsteps of Damon, Alain Delon [Purple Noon], Dennis Hopper [The American Friend], John Malkovich [Ripley’s Game], and Barry Pepper [Ripley Under Ground].
Filmed on gorgeous locations throughout Italy, including Cortona, Rome, Palermo, San Remo and the Amalfi coast, there was little time for Scott to indulge in the beauty, given how he features in almost every scene.
Also, he was occupying a dark head space in portraying a killer.
“I think with very famous literary characters, people have a real possession of them, so you can be overly concerned with that or what buzzword there might be for the character – be it psychopath or sociopath or serial killer.
“But I don’t think that Tom is a natural born killer. I think he’s somebody who’s very fallible and makes mistakes, and we see those mistakes happen in real time, and we also see his real talent taking place as well,” says Scott who earlier popularised another screen villain as Moriarty to Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman’s Holmes and Watson in Sherlock.
Born into wealth, Johnny Flynn’s Dickie Greenleaf doesn’t have a care in the world, surrounded by friends and culture and parties – and his girlfriend Marge.
Naturally, Ripley is envious of such a carefree life and entitlement.
For Flynn, he enjoyed playing the privileged bohemian Dickie. “I think the novel and our version of it is very much from Tom’s perspective. And that’s the beauty of her [Patricia Highsmith] writing, is that you slowly kind of get into Tom’s logic and why you start to feel for him and empathise with him. There’s not a lot that is there to kind of really explain what Dickie is about. But he’s somebody that Tom sees and a life that Tom sees. And you know, the way I tried to do it was really in finding the reasons to be intrigued by this person that comes into our lives,” says Flynn whose previous movies include Beast, Operation Mincemeat, Clouds of Sils Maria and this month’s cinema release, NT Live’s The Motive and the Cue.
Having existed in Tom Ripley’s world for such a long time now, Scott is almost defensive of him. “I think that the reason the character is so enduring is that we’re actually seeing what part of Tom Ripley is within us. And that’s why I think the character and the achievement of Patricia Highsmith’s novel and creating this character is that we actually root for this person who’s doing these bad things,” says the actor who featured as the “Hot Priest” in Fleabag, also starring in All of Us Strangers earlier this year.
“Because I think what she’s talking about is a man who’s ignored by society, who’s actually incredibly gifted. He’s a con artist, he’s nevertheless an artist, and he has to, in order to survive, make his living fraudulently and he’s ignored, and he doesn’t have access to any of the beautiful things that some of the other characters in the story do, namely arts and music and beauty. And when you ignore those people and they’re suddenly exposed to it, I think they become aware of a sort of rage that they have within them,” he says.
For writer/director Steve Zaillian, the sheer length of Ripley posed an extraordinary challenge. “I’ve been a fan of the book for a long time. Of course, I’d seen the other adaptations that have been done of the book, but I felt that, to do it the way I wanted to do it, I needed more time, and the eight episode format suited this book, I felt.
“And it allowed me to get into the details of the story and the details of the character and the changing relationships between the characters in a way that you can’t really do in two hours. So that was the allure for me,” says Zaillian who wrote scripts for Moneyball, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Exodus: Gods and Kings.
Like Scott, Zaillian has become enchanted by this version of Tom Ripley. “I mean, what’s not to admire? He’s got a lot of the same traits we all have, in terms of having his desires and his pride and his wants and needs. He just wants and needs those things more than we do, hopefully, and that drives him to do some terrible things.
“But yes, he’s quite talented. As Marge says at one point, he’s a professional liar. That’s what he does. And it basically fuels everything that he does, says Zaillian.
For Dakota Fanning, the film’s stunning Italian locations afforded her the opportunity to further explore Italy, having also recently made Equalizer 3 there with Denzel Washington.
“I really liked that I was getting to play one of the characters that was going to perhaps go toe-to-toe with Tom Ripley’s character a little bit, and kind of have a few kind of battles with him,” says Fanning who plays Dickie Greenleaf’s girlfriend Marge.
“I was also fascinated by how it plays with perspective in the series, where you’re mostly in Tom’s perspective, and it allowed me to kind of create what Marge’s perspective and what Marge’s reality is, and to see where they intersected and where they diverged and really explore what’s underneath and what’s not being said, just as much as what is being said. So, it was just a thrill to be a small piece of it,” she says.
Zaillian enjoyed fleshing out the character for Fanning. “Marge is one of my very favourite characters, because she’s on to Tom right away. The first moment she meets him, she knows something’s not right, and then kind of goes back and forth with him,” he says.
“It’s sort of like she doesn’t trust him. Then he plays to her vanity, and she thinks he might be okay. And then she becomes suspicious again, and it goes back and forth. And she is really, I think, the only character who knows him this long; meaning that she meets him in episode one and she’s still dealing with him in episode eight, and she’s the only character that does that. So, they have a lot to do with each other and their relationship keeps changing, and it’s really fun to watch,” he says.
With time off while Marge wasn’t in scenes, Fanning soaked up the dolce vita. “I walked and walked every place that I could in Rome. I would walk forever in Venice, just exploring. And I couldn’t stop buying things. I shopped and shopped and shopped like it was my job,” laughs Fanning.
“I pretty much was the only American in the cast for a while. So, sometimes people would pop home to England or somewhere else, but I was sort of there, by myself, and there was still COVID stuff going on. And so, all my family and friends were too scared to come travel to see me, because they didn’t want to get me sick, and I couldn’t go anywhere. So, I spent a lot of time on my own exploring, and when we were in Capri, I would hike up to the ruins and do that every morning,” she recalls.
For Scott, he still can’t quite shake off Ripley. “I loved it and I just jumped at the chance to be able to play him because it’s an extraordinary opportunity for an actor,” he says.
Ripley is streaming from 4 April 2024
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