Andrew Scott on Channeling Noel Coward in London's Design For Living Revival

The Olivier Award-winning actor Andrew Scott has had a sure, steady rise to success in the 15 years that the Dublin-born performer, now 33, has been performing professionally, first in Ireland, then England, and also on Broadway [in David Hare’s The Vertical Hour]. He's just opened at London's Old Vic Theatre as mercurial playwright Leo Mercure in Tony-winning director Anthony Page’s highly accomplished revival of Noel Coward’s Design For Living, co-starring Lisa Dillon and Tom Burke. The part and play are bringing Scott his largest London theater exposure to date, so it seemed appropriate to begin our conversation on that topic.

It must be interesting to be doing a play that deals with fame and success at a time in your career when you are confronting those things yourself.
Absolutely, especially with ideas about fame and celebrity very present nowadays. The thing about Leo is that in a way he’s far too much of an artist to be interested in success. There’s that old cliché about “living by my art alone,” and I think for Leo that’s true. That’s a great difficulty for a lot of actors in that they think that in order to be artistically admired, they have to be in some way a terribly serious person. I’m more inclined to agree with Coward that it’s nice to enjoy yourself, too. Otherwise, what the hell is the point?

There’s that terrific scene in the second act in which Leo welcomes a reporter and photographer into his home, seeming to crave and loathe their attention at once.
Coward’s writing very succinctly about what it’s like to have a terrible anguish within you when you’re trying to present yourself and your work to the public without being either too lofty or too flippant; there’s a huge amount of pain in that scene.

The play speaks to what can seem insular, even cruel, about the “design for living” achieved between Leo, the artist Otto, and the decorator, Gilda: Their fun often comes at the expense of those around them.
Yes, and that’s the danger with these characters, who I think shouldn’t be cruel in any way. What they’re doing in the play is loving each other in ways, as the play says, that “are a slightly different shape” to society at large, but that doesn’t mean that [the characters] are without vulnerability. As often as not, I think Otto, Leo and Gilda are laughing at themselves; otherwise, it just seems heartless.

Yes, which makes the tone of the play fascinatingly slippery.
I think it’s more interesting to just say of these three people that that is what they want to do with their lives, and they are a victim of those choices rather than necessarily the winners. There’s a slight danger with the play that it has this audacious “fuck you” attitude to everybody when I think Coward’s point is, "Let people live the way they want to live."

Last season, you had a triumph in Mike Bartlett’s provocatively titled Cock, a contemporary Design For Living-type play.
I have thought of that on a few occasions; I guess this is the season for triangular relationships [laughs].

I think that play would work in New York, difficulties advertising it notwithstanding.
I believe it’s still in the mix, actually [for New York], though I doubt you’d see a play with that title on Broadway! It would go down well there, I think.

You made your Broadway debut in the 2006 world premiere of David Hare’s The Vertical Hour, playing Julianne Moore’s boyfriend and Bill Nighy’s son.
I had absolutely the time of my life. There’s something extraordinary about the New York theater community, which is quite small, perhaps because everyone’s on this island [Manhattan]. It was a very difficult part, and I think they saw a lot of people. The challenge was to make interesting somebody who doesn’t have a political stance in a political play without it being completely boring.

Broadway can be quite a scene—not least all that activity nightly at the stage door.
It was extraordinary. I thought it was wonderful. Sometimes you meet the most psychotic people [at the stage door] who haven’t even seen the play, but actually what I liked was that you get to talk about the play a little bit with an audience that has just seen it. And I used to love walking home to 76th Street and Broadway. I’ve been over in New York a little bit recently with a film I did called The Duel that was shot in Croatia. I play sort of an Ivanov character; it’s a really exciting film.

Your career seems to be going really well.
Thank you, though I don’t want to make it all sound like it’s been some sort of great plan, because it certainly hasn’t. I have been lucky in doing the work that I want to do, and I have been sort of particular. I don’t accept every job I get, and I don’t get every job that I want [laughs]. I do think it’s important to be audacious in your career. I saw that early on because I worked with really terrific people from the outset. My very first job when I was 18 was with [Irish director] John Crowley [The Pillowman, A Behanding In Spokane] at the Abbey Theatre on Six Characters in Search of an Author. When you work with really good people first, your primary objective becomes to see if you can continue doing just that.

And now you get to play a playwright. Any inspirations for your Leo?
That’s a dangerous road to go down [laughs]. Because I’m playing a part originated by Noel Coward, people think I’m playing Noel Coward. There are certain moments that sound like Noel speaking directly to his audience, though I’m certainly not doing any kind of impression. But I guess where I feel really fortunate is that most of my work in theater has been on new writing, and that’s the thing I feel most proud of; as much as I’m adoring doing a classic, I feel very proud to be involved in helping to bring new plays into the world.