Prime time for Gayle Rankin with The Incomer at Edinburgh International Film Festival and Jean Brodie on stage

When we speak the Scottish actor is at home in upstate New York in the middle of a thunderstorm and as she tells me about taking on two unorthodox and charismatic roles, she occasionally leaps up from her chair and rushes me via laptop to the window to enjoy the crashing thunder and lighting being unleashed around her house, aka Sallyville, bought with the proceeds of her recent Tony-award nomination star turn as Sally Bowles in the Broadway revival of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club alongside Eddie Redmayne.

Known also for her role as Sheila the She-Wolf in the hit Netflix series GLOW, set in the world of women’s wrestling and Alys Rivers in HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon, her TV credits include The Listeners (BBC) and Perry Mason (HBO) and film appearances include Alex Garland’s Men, Amazon’s Blow the Man Down and The Greatest Showman, on stage Rankin has appeared in Sam Gold’s Hamlet and Phyllida Lloyd’s The Taming of the Shrew.

Now 37, she started acting at school in Glasgow at around the age of nine, later taking classes at the Royal Scottish Academy and Scottish Youth Theatre before attending the Juilliard School for performing arts in New York city, and has since made her home in the US.

After visiting Edinburgh International Film Festival for the premiere of The Incomer, this autumn she’s back on home turf for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, directed by Vicky Featherstone alongside a cast that also features Maureen Beattie, Liberty Black, Dyfan Dwyfor, Brian Ferguson, Sophie Fortune, Tallulah Grieve, Shreya Khaund Marshall and Bobby Rainsbury. A reworking of the story of the charismatic teacher who attempts to inculcate in her students a passion for art, culture, and the fascism of Benito Mussolini’s 1930s Italy, with disastrous consequences.

Opening at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, before touring to Glasgow, Aberdeen and Pitlochry, the National Theatre of Scotland Production, presented in partnership with The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh and in association with Pitlochry Festival Theatre, sees Rankin making her National Theatre of Scotland debut. When we speak she is getting her head into 1930s Edinburgh and Jean Brodie’s life and attitudes, aware of a contemporary context of a rise in political extremism.

“I think what's difficult to comprehend is that it doesn't feel like we've made a lot of progress. That's what's really crazy. I’ve worked on a couple of projects now on stage that have been set in the 1930s, Cabaret being one of them and now Jean Brodie, and I think what's been quite startling and upsetting is how how far we’ve not come, politically, and even in terms of gender, and I think that's pretty stark. But it’s really, really great that we're doing these plays. I think it's really important.

“In terms of Jean Brodie’s attitudes, they're very different from mine and I think that's helpful in that I need to find an attachment to someone who has a desperation and passion and need for power, and how she's attached to that and why. It's about me asking the question: why has she got this insatiable desire for power?”

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Why does Jean Brodie need to choose a ‘set’ every year from the ‘creme de la creme’ of the Marcia Blaine School for Girls?

“I think that's why Jean Brodie is a really interesting character. Muriel Spark is not explicit why she needs so badly to be a teacher and influence in this very intense way that ends up in so many heartbreaks and disasters and death.

“It's always personal and I think it has to have come from somewhere in her own development. She's a woman who's childless, unmarried and has a lot of pride in that, and that makes her unique, certainly in that time period. I think she likes feeling unique.

“I think she's had heartbreak. The love of her life died in the First World War and I think it's important to not glaze over that. People have questions about whether this is just a story she tells the girls but I believe she is telling the truth and it's a good reminder Spark gives us that this is in between the wars and such a volatile, ‘alive’ time. People don't know what the f*** they're doing. There’s a sense of panic and foreboding and I think we can probably relate to that now.”

Playing such an iconic character, did Rankin read the Spark novel or watch the 1969 Maggie Smith film version or the 1970s TV series, or does she prefer to go with the current script?

“I've done a bit of all of it, unbeknownst I was even gonna play this part.
I've seen the film but probably won't rewatch it before, with much respect to Maggie Smith, because I don't know if it's helpful. I’ll watch it once I'm done because it's an inspirational performance, but it's such a different thing. That film has the lens of the times, more of a women's lib lens. I don't know how much progress we've made, but it's certainly a female story and it's a story about female power and the complexities of that.

“I was a bit intimidated by the role.
I still am, it's such a huge deal, a big responsibility. But what would Jean Brodie do? She would just run with it.”

Is that something Rankin finds herself asking nowadays, ‘what would Jean do?’

“Hopefully not,” she laughs.

What three words would she use to describe the charismatic teacher?

“Hungry. Controlled. Fire.”

And what three words would she use to describe herself?

“Hungry also. Deep. Silly.”

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The new version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was adapted from the Muriel Spark novel by David Harrower and developed and updated from the original play which was presented at the Donmar Warehouse, London in 2018, marking 60 years since the premiere of the original stage version.

“David has worked on it even more for this production. It's much more brutal, more stark. Which is exciting. It still has that classic Jean Brodie as we know her but David has such a poetic way about him and is a terrific writer that there's a kind of gloves off feeling about it. It's quite bare. It’s an approach I’m really excited about.”


Twinned with Brodie’s political idealism and zeal runs a deep vein of glamour and in this version tweed is out and high fashion is in, as captured in the photography for the production by legendary photographer Rankin.

“She a very, very high fashion lady,” says Rankin. “Get ready for the costumes, 'cause, woo!

The costumes have a couture, sexy fascist bent to them.”

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Glasgow-raised Rankin has been US-based since she became the first Scottish student to go to Juilliard in New York and next year will celebrate two decades there.

“It was just a gut instinct to go and I fell in love with New York. I've met some of the most incredible people. My family, who I miss a lot, is in Scotland, but I've made a beautiful family here too which is great. I think I will stay in New York. I think this is where my life is.”

Does living in the US give a different perspective of Scotland and a quintessentially Scottish character like Jean Brodie?

“I think it does. I think life experience and experiencing different places is always going to bring something. And living in America is a really interesting thing to do right now. We're living through really extreme times. There's fascism everywhere across the world, but I'm living in a country that is also experiencing that, and I think that will influence how I approach the material.”

Having just played Sally Bowles in Cabaret, set in 1930s Germany where fascism is on the rise, is there anything she’ll take from that into Jean Brodie’s world?

“Totally. They are two women up against fascism. Sally believes she can beat it and Brodie wants to die having supported it.

“I love to differentiate the women that I play, but these two women are iconic and there's a duality to them. I wanted to believe that my Sally made it against every single odd, that she was like a phoenix. And I think Jean doesn't make it. But I think there's a metaphor in that Jean dies, having done everything she could and leaving her mark, having a real legacy.”

“I think Jean is vulnerable. She would die for what she believes in and believes she is going to be a part of progress. What's sad and tragic about Jean is that the progress she makes is not the progress she thinks. It’s connecting with these young women whereas she thinks she's making some larger progress. Which is the problem with fascism anyway, thinking it's doing something more important than it is and being led off in a power-hungry, horrendous direction.”

Rankin has already workshopped the play with the cast and is excited to be working with Maureen Beattie, who starred as Lear at Pitlochry Festival Theatre this summer, as Marcia Blaine headmistress Miss MacKay.

“She's incredible, an icon. She's got such a command and such a power. So I'm excited. I feel like I've got a lot to learn from her.”

Right on cue, a roll of thunder cracks across the sky above Rankin and we take it as an echo from Lear and the power of Ms Beattie.

“There she is,” laughs Rankin who films a quick video of the weather for her partner Adam Rapp, the writer, novelist, playwright, who Rankin describes as ‘amazing’. His plays include The Sound Inside and Red Light Winter, and his novels include The Year of Endless Sorrows. He also wrote and directed the film Winter Passing, starring Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell and adapted The Outsiders into a multiple Tony award-winning Broadway musical.

With Jean Brodie famously in her prime in her 40s, how does Rankin envisage her next decade? Does she think her 40s will be her prime?

“I f***ing hope so. I'm ready for my prime! Because I've spent a lot of my 20s and 30s hustling. I'm a workaholic, and I love being a workaholic, but I think there's a part of me that wants to really ENJOY life, whatever that looks like.

“I'm looking for pleasure in my 40s. I think I need pleasure in whatever form, whether it's more travel, more family, more sex, more fun, more not giving a f***. More being of myself, just unabashedness, because I think I can be quite controlled. Jean is quite inspiring in that she certainly is herself, which is not necessarily how I roll.”

Rankin’s earlier three word description of herself threw up ‘deep’ and ‘silly’, which give a hint as to why she’s such a good fit to play Isla in The Incomer, the dark comedy that sees her play another character who is unashamedly herself.

“The best thing about playing Isla is that I kind of want to be her. I'm obsessed with her. She's amazing.
Talk about someone who's unabashedly themselves. She’s completely OK with being herself. But has a lot to learn.”

Filmed in Caithness and Sutherland last year, The Incomer is the feature directorial debut of Edinburgh-born filmmaker Louis Paxton, starring Rankin, Domhnall Gleeson, Grant O'Rourke, John Hannah, Michelle Gomez and Emun Elliott, and won the NEXT Innovator Award at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

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By turns silly and sinister it’s the tale of two siblings, Isla (Rankin) and Sandy (O’Rourke), who have grown up alone on an isolated island, devouring seabirds and homespun mythology while honing their ‘killing incomers’ skills. With the arrival of Daniel (Gleeson), a geeky council worker from the mainland, sent to serve eviction papers, things take a mad, sad and dangerous turn.

“It's fun and sweet and crazy and weird and kind of pagan and almost like Yorgos Lanthimos’ [director of Bugonia, Poor Things] black, black, black humor. It has humour and pathos. It's also quite deep and socially and culturally interesting. It asks a lot of questions about community and how we live and take land from people and behave as human beings and what's important.”

What does she think she’d be like if she'd lived alone for 30 years on an island?

“I think I would be amazing,” she says. “I would love it. I love being alone. I think we've been exposed to too much, you know?”

Aside from an intriguing personality and behaviour, one of the most striking things about the character of Isla is her appearance, untouched by fashion or expectation.

“She’s so cool, right? She looks amazing. I love her so much. She’s one of those characters that makes me think, I would want to be Isla.”

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Her co-star Grant O’Rourke has described Rankin’s method of preparation for their sibling dynamic as ‘playfully hostile’.

“I was playfully hostile?” she laughs. “He was playfully hostile too. Yeah, totally. I was definitely in character for sure. We had a very strong brother-sister dynamic to the point where one night at Sundance we were both getting out of a car and I thought he was getting out the other side and he came out my side and I slammed the door on his fingers. I‘ve never felt worse in my life. I was hyperventilating and crying. It was just horrendous. I love Grant and he's such an amazing actor.
It was a weird relationship to build, but we had a lot of fun.”

Did she use any of her GLOW wrestler training for any fight scenes?

“Yes!”

And her best move?

“Probably jumping on somebody's back, hanging on and squeezing the life out of them, you know?”

Sounds powerful. What's it called?

“The Gayle Rankin special.”

After touring with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and promoting The Incomer, Rankin has scheduled in some relaxing with Rapp, going on trips upstate and indulging in her love of cooking and food, then more House of the Dragon, and after that “who knows? A big, whole exciting new chapter, hopefully.”

In her prime.

“In my prime! That's right!”

The Incomer, Edinburgh International Film Festival, 15 August, and on UK release from 4 September by Universal. EIFF, 13 - 19 August 2026, www.edfilmfest.org

Gayle Rankin stars in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at The Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh (Previews 2, 5 and 8 October) 9-18 October; The Citizens Theatre, Glasgow 21-24 October; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen 29-31 October; Pitlochry Festival Theatre 4-7 November 2026. www.nationaltheatrescotland.com