Andrew Scott Is Ripley. Need I Say More?
The Right Man For The Right Part In A Netflix Masterpiece
I’m not the kind of critic or viewer who, when they hear an actor has been cast to play a certain role, thinks they will be the perfect choice sight unseen. The ideal choice for a role can be terrible; the actor who seems utterly wrong for a character can be perfect at it. But when I heard Andrew Scott was going to be playing the title role in Ripley I made an exception. Because anyone who knows both the actor and the character knows that the two have had a date with destiny.
Andrew Scott has been acting since childhood in both British and American films. For the better part of a decade he was in some of the more memorable limited series in history but I doubt even the most devout fans of Band of Brothers and John Adams would remember he was in them. Then in 2010, he took on the role of Moriarty in the brilliant reimagining of Sherlock and, just as with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, he has never left the public consciousness since.
Ever since he managed to complete snow Sherlock and revealed just how dangerous he was in a cliffhanger “Boring!” he says dismissively of his plans, we’ve never been able to trust any character he plays at face value. This was true in his role in Spectre, where he was the highlight of an otherwise middling Bond film and of course his second most famous role of all time the Hot Priest in the second season of Fleabag. Somehow everyone connected with that show got an Emmy nomination or award but Scott which is just another sign of how when the Emmys get things wrong even when they get them right.
Scott also plays characters who wear their hearts on their sleeves: he did so memorably in the TV movie Oslo and has played earnest characters in such underrated films as Denial. And Scott famously wears his homosexuality as a badge of honor: he did so in the undervalued movie Pride and far more brilliantly in the recent masterpiece All of Us Strangers. And Scott has won many awards over the years but has only received a single Emmy nomination, not for either of his iconic roles. Now he has a date with one as he takes on a role that you can’t imagine anyone else playing.
When Patricia Highsmith created Tom Ripley in 1958, she created something unheard of in either mysteries or indeed fiction to that point: an entire series of books based on the adventures of a villain. That the books became classics is incredible, especially when you consider the queer subtext that was far more obvious than most readers were used to in the 1950s, certainly in a nation where the anti-sodomy laws still hadn’t been repealed. Five novels were written before Highsmith’s untimely passing and to date five film adaptations have been made, although interestingly enough all five films have only covered two novels. The first was Purple Noon, Rene Clement’s French adaptation in 1960; the most recent was Ripley’s Game a 2002 film that was only released on cable but that Roger Ebert thought highly enough to name a classic in his third collection of Great Movies. (It can be found on Amazon Prime.) The most well-known adaptation was Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1999. Matt Damon played the title role and it launched Jude Law into the public consciousness for his work as Dickie Greenleaf. I have long thought the movie was robbed of a Best Picture nomination and was certainly superior to many of the other nominees that year.
It’s been a long journey. Ripley was originally made and filmed for Showtime but during the cable network’s financial problems Netflix took distribution instead. It has taken a while for it to finally come out but last May it debuted on Netflix, and it is everything you might expect it to be and yet more.
The writer and director behind Ripley is Steven Zaillian who for nearly forty years has been the screenwriter behind some of the greatest films of that period. He won an Academy Award for his adaptation of Schindler’s List but he’s written for Scorsese for both Gangs of New York and The Irishmen, co-wrote Moneyball and adapted The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (they came out the same year) and has also written such less regarded classics as Searching for Bobby Fischer, A Civil Action and American Gangster. Nor is he inexperienced in the world of Peak TV: he was the writer behind HBO’s The Night Of the incredible limited series that told the story of how a young cab driver played by Riz Ahmed picked up the wrong girl after a night of partying, finds her stabbed to death in his car, and ends up being charged with her murder. His struggle to survive is mirrored by that of the attorney who finds himself working to save him.
It’s clear looking at his resume that Zaillian has more than enough experience to deal with the world of criminals. But I actually think his work on The Night Of prepared him more fully for his job as the creator and director for Ripley. Watching the opening scenes of Ripley (like The Night of, it takes place in New York) one can’t help but be reminded of the journey Naz was taking. You get a sense watching Ripley as he goes through his life in New York as a small-time con artist that he’s already a prisoner, always trying to dodge the law, the rent, his horrible apartment. When a PI finally tracks him down in a bar the first words out of his mouth are: “You’re a hard man to find.” You get the feeling Ripley is proud of that fact and a little irked that he’s been tracked down.
If you have read the book or indeed seen Minghella’s film then you will be familiar with much of you are about to see in Ripley. Tom Ripley is a small-time con-artists who is living from hand to mouth in a truly wretched apartment in 1960 when he has tracked down by Herbert Greenleaf. Herbert’s son Dickie has been living in Italy for the last two years, mooching off the family trust and his parents say its well past time he grow up and come home. The Greenleaf’s pay all of Tom’s expenses to go to Italy for this purpose and Tom is more than willing to go along, considering how miserable his life is in New York.
By the middle of the first episode he finally manages to track down Dickie and his ‘girlfriend’ Marge Sherwood and he immediately pretends that this is just a coincidence and he’s glad to find them. In the next episode he reveals the con to Dickie and Dickie is so amused that he’s willing to welcome Tom as a friend. Even if you haven’t seen the earlier adaptations or read the books, Zaillian makes it clear very early this won’t end well: the opening scene takes place in Naples six months after the series starts and Tom is dragging a corpse down the stairs of a villa. (Of course if you know the adaptations, we don’t yet know which corpses: Tom gets a heavy body count in the first book.)
So just to be clear Ripley gives every intent, at least from the first two episodes, of being completely faithful to the source material. But there’s a lot more of a reason to watch this adaptation then merely Scott’s performance — although to be clear I imagine that alone will come as a shock to those who know him from his earlier work.
There’s no sign of the over the top Jim Moriarty here or the overt sexuality of Hot Priest. Scott instead plays Ripley as a man who is completely uncomfortable in his own skin. The tagline of Minghella’s movie was: “I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody then a real nobody.” At this point, it’s clear that Tom is far closer to the latter and that he doesn’t seem to know how to do the former yet. Tom is awkward in every conceivable setting. There doesn’t seem to be any overt villainy and he alternates between worldliness and naivete around Dickie as if he can’t figure out which works for him yet.
Indeed, most of the first two episodes unfold with sparse dialogue and long closeups. This works in the show’s favor; Tom clearly picks his words with great care and is always studying himself. Tom is clearly at the point where he is far more afraid of saying the wrong thing then the right one, and its clear he’s just not good at it.
One of the longest stretches of dialogue comes in the second episode when Tom is alone in Dickie’s apartment. Dickie and Marge have gone swimming and he believes he has the place to himself. There is a long period where he says nothing, just listens to a record that is given common English phrases in Italian — and seems to be saying exactly the ones Tom is thinking. Then he takes off his clothes and puts on Dickie’s. He then begins to imitate Dickie’s voice, first derivatively, then more seriously. He has an imaginary conversation with Marge in which ‘Dickie’ is breaking up with her. Finally he makes a gesture and says something in Dickie’s voice — and then freezes because Dickie has returned to the apartment early.
Much of the brilliance in Scott’s work is in the silences and often in his inscrutable expressions. Scott can be a very demonstrative actor so this is a change of pace for him that works remarkably well. I’m reminded of so much of Anya Taylor-Joy brilliant performance in The Queen’s Gambit where so much of her work was behind a hundred yard stare. Both characters were always trying to think several steps ahead and that pensiveness suits Scott here as well.
The other leads in the show are Johnny Flynn as Dickie and Dakota Fanning as Marge. Both have big shoes to fill themselves; their most famous predecessors were Law and Gwynneth Paltrow. But just as with Scott, both Flynn and Fanning have found ways to make the roles their own.
Law’s work had an equal measure of charm, sexuality and repugnance. Flynn chooses to emphasize the repugnance more than the latter two; saving the charm and sexuality for the people who don’t know him. You get the feeling watching Flynn’s work that he doesn’t remember Tom at all and only takes him in because he wants to show off his life to a complete stranger. It takes less time then in the film for Dickie’s contempt and distaste for Tom to begin the surface but in both cases you know that Dickie Greenleaf is the kind of man you have to know well to hate. Tom isn’t there yet, but he will be.
In the movie Marge was not incredibly well written and was power she had came from Paltrow’s work. Fanning is able to give Marge a little more depth than I saw in Minghella’s version. You can see that Marge is as much a dilettante as Dickie is. She’s been trying to write a book about her experiences but she hasn’t shown anybody. One of the funny sequences in Ripley comes when Tom reads Margie’s book with the purpose of editing and you can see from his expression and random dialogue how truly horrible a writer Marge is.
Fanning plays Marge with more frailty than we saw with Paltrow’s version which explains why she hangs around Dickie as long as she does. (It’s much clearer in this version that their relationship isn’t sexual) Marge clearly is repulsed by Dickie — with good reason, she knows him — but she’s afraid to leave because that would be acknowledging that she is as much a failure as he is. Dickie keeps saying Marge is ‘a friend’ and we can tell just how badly he treats the people who care for him.
I should also mention that Ripley is by far one of the most gorgeously shot series of 2024. Zaillian makes the creative decision to film the show entirely in black and white and I truly think it is the right one. Watching the episodes I am reminded both of the classic film noir and a 1930s screwball comedy. The latter may seem like an unlikely niche, but I’m reminded that so many of the cons Ripley does in his books involves precision timing. In raves for both Talented Mr. Ripley and Ripley’s Game Ebert mentioned the resemblance to Marx Brothers films, and in neither case was he being derogatory. The episodes do lean into it a bit more — there’s a long stairway that Ripley keeps marching up and down in the first episode and his inability to follow directions and languages — but I think it’s a necessity. Part of the reason the Ripley novels were popular at the time had much to do with the fact that the readers wondered how the character was going to escape the law in each novel, and sometimes that’s as ridiculous as it is suspenseful. Considering that Scott is gifted at both comedy and drama, that’s yet another reason you can’t imagine anyone else in the role.
As I mentioned Patricia Highsmith wrote five novels centering on Ripley. Right now, there’s only one season planned (hence the reason its being entered in the limited series category in this year’s Emmys) but if it is adapted into an original series, there is a lot of source material to go back to and much of it has never been filmed. There’d be far less objection if Ripley was adapted not drama than there is for Shogun right now and its hard to argue that anyone can come away from this series and not want more. I don’t need a reason not to spend more time with Andrew Scott on TV and we have no reason not to have more Ripley.
Author’s Note: I should mention that at least the first two episodes show very little sign of deserves a TV-MA rating. There hasn’t been a single four-letter word in English or Italian, we’ve seen one nude scene (though more than a few nude paintings) and we have yet to see any violence. I don’t blame the TV-MA rating as a misjudgment, though; I don’t think this is the kind of show kids who love Stranger Things could watch with the same innocence. Some might need to see it for other reasons, but I do get why their parents might not be as willing.
My Score: 4.75 stars.