{"id":878615,"date":"2026-08-31T20:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T20:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878615\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T20:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T20:24:14","slug":"how-andrew-scott-took-on-the-role-of-a-lifetime-in-elsinore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/878615\/","title":{"rendered":"How Andrew Scott Took on the Role of a Lifetime in \u2018Elsinore\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAndrew Scott<\/a> had played Hamlet<\/a> 150 times, each production clocking in at three hours and 45 minutes. He\u2019d learned all 1,500 lines to perform at every show. He\u2019d mastered the physical demands of the final-act swordfight and waded through the complex, volatile emotional journey that led into it. \u201cYou\u2019re dealing with the very essence of the biggest question we have,\u201d as Scott puts it now. \u201cWhat happens to us when we die?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe New York Times\u2019 Ben Brantley had written of Scott\u2019s performance, \u201cI could see his heart palpitating, and breaking apart, within his chest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis was in 2017, when Scott wowed the West End with his take on the Prince of Denmark. Nearly a decade later, the Olivier Award-winning Irish native needed to unlearn how he pulled that off \u2014 and start anew. He\u2019d been cast in Elsinore, a dramatic film retelling one of the greatest Hamlet feats in the history of the British theater: When Ian Charleson took on the role while dying of AIDS, ultimately succumbing to the illness less than two months after his final performance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you\u2019re talking about \u2018to be or not to be,\u2019 \u2018do I live or do I die\u2019 \u2014 Ian is not talking about that as an almost. It was an inevitability at that stage, that he was going to die,\u201d Scott says. \u201cThe idea that Ian was doing this when he was so sick is still, to my mind, just completely mind-blowing. And his decision to do it was just incredibly courageous.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd so Scott steps into those bold shoes in Elsinore, which will screen at various festivals, including Toronto and London, before hitting theaters on November 20. He delivers a totally unique, equally searing Hamlet in character as Charleson, while also playing a defiant artist facing down the end of his life. He\u2019s an out gay actor portraying a gay actor who came up in a time when being open could mean career suicide. And he\u2019s a credited producer on a movie for the very first time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis film is so much about everything in my life \u2014 I\u2019ve spent my life in the theater,\u201d says Scott, who\u2019s made his name onscreen in TV series like Sherlock and Fleabag and in the critically lauded 2023 film All of Us Strangers. \u201cAnd being a gay actor, it\u2019s still so moving to me that I get the opportunity to play a part that Ian and his contemporaries would not have gotten while they were working actors.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted people to be able to understand that he was trying to live \u2014 it\u2019s not about fetishizing his death,\u201d Scott continues. \u201cHe was so full of life and fun, and he did this extraordinary thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tScott in \u2018Elsinore.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of StudioCanal<\/p>\n

\n\t**<\/p>\n

\n\tCharleson died at age 40 but still left behind an impressive body of work. The Scottish star broke out for his appealing turn as an Olympian-con-missionary in 1981\u2019s Chariots of Fire, and is one of a handful of actors to have starred in back-to-back Oscar winners for best picture, having played the Anglican priest Charlie Andrews in Gandhi the next year. By the time of his AIDS diagnosis, though, his career had stalled. Then Daniel Day-Lewis abruptly withdrew from the National Theatre<\/a>\u2019s 1989 staging of Hamlet \u2014 later citing emotional distress \u2014 which led director Richard Eyre (played in Elsinore by Johnny Flynn) to seek Charleson out as a replacement.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe story of that last year of Ian\u2019s life is sort of legendary in London theater now,\u201d says screenwriter Stephen Beresford (Pride). Charleson was advised by his doctor, the pioneering Margaret Johnson (played by Olivia Colman<\/a>), that the demands of Hamlet would be far too much for anyone as ill as he had become. Yet he did it, splitting his days between treatment at the hospital clinic and rehearsals with his cast.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was just astonished by this miracle of human strength\u2026that was his way of remaining utterly connected to his purpose and his identity right up until the end,\u201d says Elsinore director Simon Stone<\/a> (The Dig). \u201cThere are stories of filmmakers who have died on film sets, who make their last movie and then disappear into the great beyond. There\u2019s something so meaningful about that idea, that you die doing what you love and that you also get to write the narrative of your end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs a younger actor, Scott was often likened to Charleson. Elsinore evolved organically between him, Stone, and Beresford, who\u2019ve all worked fluidly between stage and screen. They batted around ideas in a WhatsApp group chat called \u201cThe Charleson Chaps\u201d to nail down the core of what they intended to say. They wanted to tell a story of human resilience. They wanted to capture the miracle of queer community. They wanted to honestly examine the experience of a visible, closeted actor in the \u201880s. They wanted to find joy alongside the heartbreak, triumph alongside the stark reality.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the face of the thing, Scott would need to embody that mission. He lost significant weight and buried himself into the role. \u201cWe knew it would be really special if he left it all out on the field, if he didn\u2019t spare himself or us anything and honestly went into the gamut of emotions that someone must feel, going through what Ian was going through,\u201d Stone says of his star. \u201cThere\u2019s this spirit of Ian that has been handed down, and Andrew\u2019s managed to catch it in the ether. I\u2019m convinced that their spirits have been whispering to each other because it feels like he\u2019s possessed in that performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve known Andrew a long time, and I knew him when he was playing Hamlet. I would see him afterwards coming off stage like he\u2019d been dragged behind the back of a lorry for five hours,\u201d Beresford adds. \u201cAnd that\u2019s important \u2014 that an actor who\u2019s been through the Everest of Hamlet understands what it\u2019s like to play it while you are sick, to put yourself through what that was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCharleson\u2019s inner circle from that time was interviewed by Beresford and others to accurately capture his world. His actual best friend, David Rintoul, plays the Ghost in Elsinore\u2019s imagined production of his Hamlet; Rintoul had actually starred in Scott\u2019s 2017 show too, as had the Olivier-winning Juliet Stevenson \u2014 who\u2019s also here, again the Gertrude to Scott\u2019s tortured Prince. Scott had similarly worked with Flynn and Colman before, as well as Billie Piper<\/a>, who\u2019s magnetic as the famed casting director Patsy Pollack, who nursed Charleson in his last days.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a slightly different love story, really, at the center of the film, because it\u2019s very true of a lot of gay men, particularly at that time, that the people who nursed and took care of them and supported them were friends \u2014 and very often female friends,\u201d Beresford says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe needed somebody who is both theatrical and sexy and has got that enormous gigantic heart \u2014 and Billie is one of the greats,\u201d Scott adds. \u201cEvery single person that\u2019s involved in the cast is somebody that I have previous connections with, people that I love or that Simon and Stephen have worked with.\u201d This tightness often brought levity to the heavy material, and aided in the execution of one of Elsinore\u2019s more surprising qualities: It\u2019s laced with humor, beginning to (almost) end.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was very, very important to me that the film is not a misery memoir,\u201d Beresford says. \u201cIt\u2019s how people were here in London during that crisis, and that to me is not accidental. It\u2019s proof of life, a sense of humor, and it\u2019s a defiance \u2014 a fist shaken at the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

Ian Charleson in \u2018Chariots of Fire.\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\t**<\/p>\n

\n\tIf Elsinore feels a bit traditional in execution, given the radical figure at its center, this was very much by design. In fact: The movie was directly inspired by sports classics like Rocky and The Karate Kid. \u201cWe\u2019re living in a very divisive world at the moment, and that level of subdivision creates such loneliness \u2014 so the acknowledgement that we all accept each other\u2019s differences is a weirdly radical statement right now,\u201d Stone says. \u201cThat very humanist, almost old-fashioned Hollywood message of \u2018We\u2019re here for each other\u2019 is something that I felt really drawn to telling in the movie. I studied a lot of \u201970s, \u201980s, \u201990s Hollywood dramas: Seeing how they were structured, you get that sense of cathartic joy at the end of a struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sports-movie metaphor was applied most directly to the Hamlet rehearsal scenes, which are cut through the movie with tremendous energy by editor Valerio Bonelli. They were treated by Stone like Rocky\u2019s training montages, filmed almost documentary-style on the fly \u2014 which meant, in Scott\u2019s case, he needed to know the play like never before. The approach made perfect sense to the actor: \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to represent theater as this polite undertaking that you do, where everybody then goes and has a cocktail,\u201d Scott says. \u201cIt\u2019s this extraordinary physical thing that sometimes people aren\u2019t aware of, just how Olympian the task is for theater performers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe learned all seven of the soliloquies to recite them on demand, since Stone would give spontaneous direction to Flynn\u2019s Eyre to then pass on to Scott\u2019s Charleson. \u201cI didn\u2019t want anyone to be checking with Andrew what he was going to do when the cameras rolled,\u201d Stone says. \u201cI wanted him to have the absolute right to do whatever the hell he wanted to do and go wherever the hell he wanted to go.\u201d Through the role, Scott also processed his grief over losing his mother just a year or two earlier. \u201cMy mom was my biggest supporter,\u201d he says. \u201cI feel like when you\u2019re doing something for somebody else and you\u2019ve got nothing to lose, it brings something out. I really wanted to get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe team combed through Hamlet to find passages that most strongly connected to Charleson\u2019s story, aided by Scott\u2019s singular facility with Shakespearean language. \u201cI\u2019ve always been very passionate about the idea that Shakespeare should be understandable, that we should be able to go, \u2018Oh, I understand what that means\u2019 \u2014 I don\u2019t love the idea of Shakespeare being really high art,\u201d the actor says.<\/p>\n

\n\tElsinore goes to great pains not to present Charleson as exceedingly simple, either. \u201cA lot of what\u2019s written about Ian is wonderful, but slightly saintly,\u201d as Beresford puts it. The film asks complex questions about Charleson presenting as straight to maintain his career, as his life refocuses on the queer people in his life, past and present.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was such discrimination around it \u2014 it really, really did impact the way that people saw or read or received your work,\u201d Stone says. \u201cHe didn\u2019t want to sacrifice any of those roles, and I understand that.\u201d Scott, a three-time Golden Globe and Emmy nominee, publicly came out 13 years ago, and has seen his career flourish in the time since. Elsinore, in turn, felt like a powerful meta subject to bring full circle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn Ian\u2019s time, there were no examples of people who weren\u2019t straight being in the movies \u2014 it\u2019s as simple as that, and that\u2019s just the fact of it,\u201d Scott says. \u201cWhen I made the decision to be open about my sexuality, I remember at the beginning people warning me not to, that there weren\u2019t too many examples. In some ways, I understood that fear. But it\u2019s important for me to say that as soon as I came out, it had nothing but positive effects on my career \u2014 I can only speak personally \u2014 and I feel very proud and very moved that, while the war is never over, in some ways, we\u2019ve come a long way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStay tuned for more\u00a0exclusive<\/a>\u00a0features on this fall\u2019s biggest festival-bound films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew Scott had played Hamlet 150 times, each production clocking in at three hours and 45 minutes. He\u2019d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[70084,304913,49,48,361,75,282,150508,181390,2123,304914],"class_list":["post-878615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-andrew-scott","tag-billie-piper","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-exclusive","tag-hamlet","tag-national-theatre","tag-olivia-colman","tag-simon-stone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}