Andrew Scott: Opposing gay actors in straight roles is ‘prejudice’

Andrew Scott says he has no interest in appeasing audiences who object to an openly gay actor being cast as a straight love interest.

The Irish actor made the remarks Saturday during an onstage appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival, part of the festival’s “In Conversation” series, which touched on his career and his role in the awards-season drama “Elsinore.”

Mr. Scott, who has been open about his sexuality since 2013, pointed to his breakout turn as a priest who becomes the object of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s affection in the second season of “Fleabag” — a role that earned his character the nickname “The Hot Priest” — as a turning point in how audiences viewed a gay actor playing a straight woman’s love interest. He said he once feared the casting would cost him future roles, but that theatergoers who already knew his sexuality from his stage work never seemed to mind.

Asked about people who still object to that kind of casting, Mr. Scott didn’t equivocate.

“That’s just prejudice,” he said, adding that he won’t cater to viewers who feel otherwise.

The comments arrive as Mr. Scott’s performance in “Elsinore” — which he has said is his first credit as a film producer — draws early Oscar buzz. He stars as Ian Charleson, the Scottish stage and screen actor best known for “Chariots of Fire,” who was diagnosed with HIV in 1986 and delivered a celebrated performance as Hamlet at London’s National Theatre in 1989 while dying of AIDS-related illness.

Mr. Scott has weighed in on the broader casting debate before. In a December 2024 interview with The Guardian, he said arguments over queer casting could tip into overreaction. “People can be very extreme and hysterical,” he said then, arguing that individual stories deserved to be judged on their own terms rather than by a blanket rule.

Whether Mr. Scott’s blunter comments reignite the industry’s long-running debate over authenticity in casting remains to be seen. They land at a moment when his career is already drawing renewed scrutiny, both for “Elsinore” and for a resume that spans straight and gay roles alike — from Moriarty in “Sherlock” to the grieving, gay screenwriter at the center of “All of Us Strangers.”