Interview: Dougray Scott
Unravelling the mystery of the BBC's The Woman in White, Dougray Scott talks to Janet Christie about finding the humanity in all his characters, films, football and muddling through as a parent. Portrait by Debra Hurford Brown
Dougray Scott knows how to cultivate an air of mystery. From the moment he appears as Sir Percival Glyde in the new BBC1 adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ 1859 thriller The Woman in White, there are hints of baddie buttoned up beneath the elegant waistcoat, cravat and starched white collar ensemble, a sense that this dashing Victorian gentleman is not quite what he appears.
Regarded as one of the first crime mystery books, Wilkie Collins’ thriller ticks all of the Victorian gothic boxes: drugged heiresses in nightdresses, lunatic asylums, duplicitous villains, beautiful doppelgangers. It’s little wonder Collins had half of London hooked on their weekly fix of his sensational novel serialised in Charles Dickens’ All the Year Round magazine, and it’s the same mastery of intrigue that makes it perfect for the Sunday night period drama Downton slot now.
Scott says he relished the role of baddie baronet with an evil plan to carry off both the lovely Laura Fairlie and her inheritance, having become captivated by the novel as a bookish youngster hanging out in the library near his Glenrothes home.
“I was always reading and felt an incredible affinity for the power of the written word, fell in love with it,” he says.
“I’m just such a fan of writers, and feel so empowered by them. As an actor you bring their words to life, but it’s the writer who has the idea,” he says over the phone from London. He’s in town to promote the series, taking time out from filming the TV version of Guy Ritchie’s heist romp Snatch in Malaga.
“Wilkie Collins is an extraordinary writer who is a terrific storyteller. He understood the psychological thriller style of writing, mystery and suspense, providing the audience with a picture then very subtly undercutting that with another reality. With the character of Percival, Collins leads you down different paths and then surprises you.”
It seems Sir Percival is a long way from cardboard cut out baddie and Scott is keen to explain the complexities and moral ambiguities that go into motivating his character.
“I guess ultimately he’s a baddie, the bad guy of the piece,” he says, “but I think he’s complex. That’s what I was really interested in, to understand why he became who he became. He had a very fractured childhood and discovered his parents weren’t married so he’s had to live this lie, knowing the consequences of it coming out were devastating in terms of money and status. I don’t think he’s a psychopath, I think he’s desperate. And as it continues he becomes childlike, raw, vulnerable, desperate, tragic, pathetic, and you see more of who he is.
“That’s what’s interesting with any person described as bad. You want to find the like in them. And if you’re playing someone who’s good, you want to find the flaws.”
The Woman in White is just one of Scott’s current screen outings as besides Percival he’s also reprising the role of playwright Arthur Miller (he played him in Simon Curtis’ 2011 film My Week With Marilyn) in an episode of Sky Arts’ Urban Myths series, airing on Sky and TV Streaming service NOW TV. Entitled It’s Me, Sugar, it stars Gemma Arterton as Monroe to Scott’s Miller, as her then husband supports her through her 47 takes to deliver the titular line in Some Like It Hot.
“Yeah, I think that’s a true story,” he says. “It was great to play him again. I’ve read and watched every piece of film and interview with Arthur Miller and worked with my dialect coach. You do that with every character, start with nothing and build it up, combine the physicality with the lyric.”
Scott is an amenable interviewee, his Fife accent undimmed by years in London and LA, his current bases. He’s a happy-in-his-skin mix of where he’s from and where he’s gone, a guy in his 50s from Fife who is as content discussing his beloved Hibs as he is the craft of acting. Without ever lapsing into luvvie-speak, he’ll talk about how theatre can move him to tears or explain the way he invests in a character, and happily chats about parenting and his kids, ranging from three-year-old Milo to 20-year-old twins Eden and Gabriel, admitting to loving it, while still not “having a bloody clue”.
So when I ask him if he’s ever had any apparently supernatural Wilkie Collins-style experiences, he doesn’t miss a beat.
“Yeah, when I was a kid I saw ghosts when I was lying in bed back home in Fife. I remember seeing these figures floating across my bedroom and going out through the windows. I was petrified, couldn’t move I was so scared, frozen to the spot. See, something interesting did happen in Glenrothes.” He laughs.