Andrew Scott brings first producing project Elsinore to Toronto
Andrew Scott arrived in Toronto with a first as well as a homecoming.
On Saturday, Sept. 12, he appeared at the Royal Alexandra Theatre as part of the Toronto International Film Festival's "In Conversation" series to discuss "Elsinore" and his career. The talk was moderated by Keith Bennie, TIFF's vice president of public programming. The appearance followed the film's launch on the festival circuit.
"Elsinore" is directed by Simon Stone and stars Scott as Scottish actor Ian Charleson, according to Variety. The film is a biopic, a drama built around a real life, centred on Charleson's final performance as Hamlet, according to People. It debuted in Telluride before playing Toronto. That two-step launch takes a film from the smaller American festival to the larger Canadian audience.
Charleson was a gay actor. He was dying of AIDS while he played Hamlet, according to Variety. In "Elsinore," Olivia Colman plays the doctor who warns Charleson that stress could worsen his health. Hamlet, Shakespeare's tragedy about a Danish prince, sits at the centre of the story.
Producing is new for him. "Elsinore" is the first film Scott has ever produced. Producing means helping to get the film made, not only acting in it. He said it is personal to him because it is set in the theatre, is about representation of gay actors in the '90s and is about family.
He knows the stage role from the inside. Scott played Hamlet on stage in London in 2017. Nine years later, he has returned to the play in a very different way, through Charleson's story.
Toronto is familiar ground. Scott made his acting debut as a teenager in the Irish film "Korea," which premiered at TIFF in 1995. More than 30 years later, he was back on a TIFF stage to talk about his own production. TIFF also lists him with two TIFF '25 titles, "Blue Moon" and "Wake Up Dead Man," according to TIFF.
The conversation touched on wider industry history. Variety's Clayton Davis has noted that no openly gay man has ever won the Oscar for best actor. For audiences in Toronto, that context gives the talk its weight. A story about a gay actor in the '90s meets a festival where questions of who gets seen still matter.
