Is Tom Ripley gay? Andrew Scott prefers not to know.
The latest adaptation continues to toy with the sexuality of one of literature's most intriguing villains.
Patricia Highsmith released the character of Tom Ripley into the world in her 1955 novel. He's a conman that continues to intrigue - Highsmith wrote numerous sequels, and her work has been adapted several times for the screen.
The latest adaptation stars queer fave Andrew Scott as the eponymous antihero.
“There’s something that’s so enduring about this character...” says Andrew Scott, speaking about the role. "I think it’s because we have so many questions about him.”
This new version is written and directed by Steven Zaillian, and has been released on Netflix. The series also stars Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning.
Shifting the period from the 50s to the 60s, Ripley gives us the story of Tom Ripley - a small-time scammer just scraping by in New York City. Tom crosses paths with a wealthy man who hires him to travel to Italy and convince his wayward son to return home. But his time in Italy opens Tom to a world of wealth and luxury, luring into a life of deceit, fraud, and murder.
While the casting of Scott in the lead role may have raised expectations that we were going to get a sexed-up uber-gay version of the Ripley story, the results are a lot more nuanced.
“One of the big things about Ripley’s sexuality was that I felt quite strongly that I didn’t want to overly diagnose—for want of a better word—his sexuality, or even his nationality, or his age, or his upbringing...” explains Scott, speaking in media interviews.
“Your first job as an actor is to try and understand the character and not judge them…" adds Scott. “The big challenge for me in this character was to accept the fact that there’ll be some part of Tom that I’ll never really know—as much as I want to—which made it a kind of lonely place to be.”
