Andrew Scott worries Heated Rivalry fans will avoid sad gay dramas like Elsinore

In a conversation that spanned his incredible acting career, Andrew Scott shared what troubles him most about the state of LGBTQ+ cinema and television drama today... that audiences seeking to indulge in queer joy may avoid recalling our painful history.

The Irishman, whose new film opened the BFI London Film Festival Wednesday, joined his castmates the next day at London’s BFI Southbank, along with some of the people upon whom the film, Elsinore, is based. As Them reported, Scott plays Ian Charleson, who took over the role of Hamlet from Daniel Day Lewis while battling AIDS just months before the actor's death in 1990.

“I welcome things like Heartstopper and Heated Rivalry and Red, White, and Royal Blue and all those things that are joyful. I really, really, really do. And I think the fact that there’s lots of different types of gay drama, so to speak, on film [and] television is extraordinary," said Scott, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.

“It troubles me a little bit because I think people perhaps don’t want to go back to a time when you’re talking about the AIDS crisis, or you’re talking about [a time] when it was incredibly difficult for gay people. I think that sometimes comes from a place of shame," Scott explained. "You go, ‘I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to see that anymore.’ There’s something a little troubling about that for me, to say: ‘I don’t want to go and see something that was a difficult time.’ Because the shame does not lie with the gay people.The shame lies with the governments who ignored the AIDS crisis and the stigma that was around people and the innate prejudice that was in society. That’s someone else’s shame."

Scott's defiant statement was greeted with an enormous outburst of applause, THR reported.

He described Wednesday night’s premiere of the tearjerker as a “very, very, very special evening.” Scott, who is also a producer on Elsinore, played Hamlet for 150 shows at London’s Almeida Theatre in 2017, and recalled the process was arduous. “Everybody knows this, but [Hamlet] is three hours and 45 minutes long. We do it twice on a Wednesday and twice on a Saturday. I’ve played the part myself,” he said. “It absolutely knocks the stuffing out of you."

As for Charleson, Scott describes his achievement in Hamlet as “Olympian:”

“The idea that he did that when he had no immune system is so genuinely… the physical and psychological toll that must have taken on him. But in another way, it enlivened him, and I could sort of understand that,” Scott said. He talked about how Charleson’s face was swollen from septicaemia, a condition familiar to those with AIDS. “I think he was concerned that people would be like, ‘Oh my god!’ because he was not recognizable necessarily at some stages, and that’s really heartbreaking and almost humiliating. I can imagine that he thinks this is going to be a humiliating experience to come out and have everybody facing the same direction — at you. The bravery of that, at a time when having that particular disease felt like there was some sort of blame attached to it,” said Scott.

During the conversation, Scott recalled his work alongside the stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Paul Mescal and now Olivia Colman: “Not just Olivia, but seeing all those people, Phoebe and Paul and Benedict… Actors are the loves of my life in some way,” said Scott. “I love actors… They’re fun and brilliant people. If you are feeling awful when you go on stage, the actors are always there. But Ian Charleson, I know without a doubt that when he told them about [his AIDS diagnosis], the outpouring of support from the theater community, when there wasn’t a lot of support for anybody, was extraordinary. And I’m proud of that. The film sort of addresses that.”

During the filming of Wake Up, Dead Man, Scott's mother Nora died, and he talked about how she inspired him and his sister.

"She was just an example of somebody who loved the theater, loved films, and loved everything about it, but lived a sort of so-called small life," he said. "But [she] had a giant effect on somebody who did go into the arts — her son, and my sister is in the arts too — so I guess that local theater groups and art galleries and book clubs and all that stuff matters so much because it’s inspiring and the world might get bigger, but the passion is exactly the same.”

Elsinore is scheduled to be released in select theaters in the United States on November 20, 2026.