He was known as the “hot priest” on the second and apparently final season of Fleabag, but now Andrew Scott has turned his attention to playing Patricia Highsmith’s infamous criminal sociopath, Tom Ripley. Scott will star in Ripley, an 8-episode series on Showtime based on Highsmith’s novels, written and directed by Oscar-winner Steve Zaillian.
They’ve really put together one Hell of a package here. Scott is red-hot right now, and I don’t just mean by the scores of fans who dug his role on the Emmy-winning Fleabag. He’ll be appearing in John Carney’s upcoming Amazon series Modern Love, HBO’s adaptation of His Dark Materials, and in Sam Mendes’ war movie 1917. Zaillian is the Oscar-winning writer of a little film you may have heard of called Schindler’s List, plus nominations for Moneyball, Gangs of New York, and Awakenings. He wrote the script for Scorsese’s long-awaited mob drama The Irishman, as well. He recently earned an Emmy nomination for writing HBO’s series The Night Of.
The Tom Ripley character was the subject of five novels by Highsmith, many of which were adapted for the big and small screen. The most famous of which was the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley starring Matt Damon. This new series follows Ripley, “a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, [who] is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son to return home. Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud and murder.” [THR]
