Andrew Scott went viral last month for a surprising reason: calling himself “daddy” and spitting in a young actor’s mouth.
The NSFW moment was part of a trailer for Leo Riech’s sexy new A24 comedy series It Gets Worse, where Scott plays a therapist who explores his dominant side while hooking up with main character Ethan (Reich).
In an expansive new interview with Scott as part of his Out100 cover story after being named Icon of the Year, the 50-year-old actor is finally opening up about the kinky trailer that featured the now-infamous line, “You’re just a hole for daddy.”
Scott is no stranger to sexy roles — he famously played the “hot priest” opposite Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag — but he was excited to play a character that strayed away from a puritanical and heteronormative view of sex.
“It’s subversive and it’s transgressive, and I really love all that kind of stuff,” he told Out.
The trailer that had fans drooling showed Scott dominating Reich by standing over him and gripping his neck while saying, “Now open your mouth, you little slut. Open wide,” before spitting in the shirtless young man’s mouth.
This scene might have given some actors pause, but the All of Us Strangers star wants to play complicated and “surprising” roles that challenge him.
“If things are really well-written and surprising, and you like the people that you’re acting with, then I feel like, yeah, why not? I think you’ve got to be fearless about that sort of stuff,” he said. “The internet stuff may or may not happen, but that was just a really fun morning’s work. We had such a laugh doing it.”
Scott’s role in It Gets Worse plays with power dynamics and kinky sex, something that the star explained can be hard to get right even if you focus more on “the dynamic and the provocation" and less on the actual sex acts.
“I have no qualms about doing that stuff. It’s part of our human nature, and you approach those scenes in the same way you do any other scene,” Scott said. “But if it’s done with a degree of lightness, I always think that’s much more fun. And then I don’t know, people get a bit hysterical about sex, I think.”
It Gets Worse premieres on Paramount+ on November 6 in the U.S.
