To be, or not to be, that is the question at the heart of Hamlet, Shakespeare’s immortal stage tragedy about a prince grappling with the meaning of life and death. Over four centuries later, that query is asked again with new poignancy in Elsinore. Starring Andrew Scott — and directed by Simon Stone (The Dig) off a script by Stephen Beresford (Pride) — the film depicts the last act of Ian Charleson, a closeted actor who makes it his mission to play Hamlet at London’s prestigious National Theatre as he is secretly dying of an AIDS-related illness.
Andrew Scott in DRIES VAN NOTEN Full LookQuil Lemons
Charleson, a Scottish actor who gained some international renown for roles in Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, gave 24 performances as the Danish prince in 1989 to glowing reviews, and passed just weeks after his final bow at age 40. His choice to take on the notoriously grueling role — following Daniel Day-Lewis, who dropped out of the production due to a breakdown — is a central conflict of Elsinore. Throughout the film, Charleson spars with his physician, Dr. Margaret Johnson (Olivia Colman), over whether to prioritize life’s longevity or a lofty ambition.
For Scott — a gay Irish actor who also played Hamlet to acclaim in 2017 on London’s West End — Charleson’s quest hit home. “He saw this opportunity that not many actors get, which is to play the greatest part that’s ever been written for an actor in one of the world’s greatest theaters. He nailed his colors to the mast as an actor, and that’s what he decided to do with his time. I find that so extraordinarily moving and inspiring,” Scott shares.
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To sum up that choice between survival and something more, Scott quotes “Bread and Roses,” a James Oppenheim poem: “Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses!” That 1911 line traces its roots to a rallying cry from labor and women’s rights activists. In the modern era, it also resonates with marginalized queer people like Charleson, who posthumously revealed his fight with HIV, sparking public awareness about the virus in a time of silence and stigma.
But Elsinore — named after Hamlet’s castle, perhaps coded here as the National Theatre — shines a new light on not just one actor, but a creative community of people who made art and found joy in the face of an epidemic. The film is a love letter to the theater world and those who work in it — from the ticket-taker at the box office; to the gay makeup artist who helps hide Charleson’s Kaposi sarcoma, pitched to the public as a sinus issue; to the cast members who collectively bang on the glass of their dressing-room windows in a ritual summoning of good luck on opening night. This community extends beyond the stage. In one memorable scene, patients in an AIDS ward stage a song-and-dance routine to Ethel Merman’s recording of “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” the Irving Berlin classic from Annie Get Your Gun.
“One of the many insidious things about the AIDS crisis was that we don’t think about the ferocity and brilliance and all the extraordinary attributes that these individuals had, and we think about their demise rather than their actual life. And Ian was an extraordinarily, wickedly funny person,” Scott says.
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“I think sometimes we can kind of conflate fame with being a successful actor,” Scott says, adding, “So much of this film is about supporting actors…both as people — supporting actors in a play, but also [friends] who are inordinately supportive towards him in achieving his dream.”
Grounding the connection to Charleson, several of the late actor’s friends and contemporaries appear in Elsinore, such as David Rintoul, who plays the Ghost in the film’s Hamlet (as he did in Scott’s 2017 staging), as well as Hilton McCrae, a hospital patron. But Scott — he has a producer credit, a first for him — also leaves an imprint on this personal project.
“This is such a labor of love,” he says. “The film is peppered with people that I love and people who have supported me and people that I have worked with over the years [in] theater and in film.” Among those collaborators are Juliet Stevenson (Hamlet), Johnny Flynn (Ripley), and Billie Piper (Catherine Called Birdy). His sister, Sarah Scott, also plays a casting director.
And of course, there’s Olivia Colman — “a gay icon,” he agrees. The pair worked together on Fleabag and Locke, and it’s a joy to see them reunite in a tête-à-tête of reason versus passion. “She is a dear friend and, obviously, a giant of acting,” Scott says of the Oscar winner. “I’m just so grateful to her that she came and was so extraordinary in the movie, because you need somebody who [can convey] that argument, which is a very potent one, about safety and freedom…with real strength.”
Capturing a behind-the-scenes laugh at Andrew Scott's Out100 photo shoot.Stuart Sox
Colman previously shared a screen with another Elsinore actor: Joe Locke. The Heartstopper star plays Nicholas, a young man who befriends Charleson in the AIDS ward where the actor seeks treatment between rehearsals. Scott has nothing but praise for the 23-year-old, who previously broke major ground playing a gay teen in his Netflix series. “Joe has done such incredible work, just in his visibility and his choices and just who he is as a person. I just love him as a person. He’s so affecting and beautiful in the film,” Scott says.
In Elsinore, Nicholas reminds the audience that HIV also impacts young people — then and today. “To be able to show that this disease just mutilated 20-year-old boys, it’s absolutely devastating, and it’s shameful that governments were so slow in responding to it,” Scott says. “Thank God for the advances with PrEP and with education and visibility and so many other things. But it’s very important for us to realize that the war is never over. We’ve got to…remember that this is only one generation ago.”
The relationship between Charleson and Nicholas also shows how queer people from different generations can bond with, comfort, and inspire one another. When asked about the importance of this depiction, Scott recalls screening Elsinore to the gay acting legend Ian McKellen, who in 1989 famously gave his Evening Standard Theatre Award, which he won for Othello, to his dying friend Charleson in honor of his “perfect Hamlet.” Scott sees the passing of the baton.
“Ian and people of his generation, the generosity — they show you the path,” Scott says. “And in some ways, what’s beautiful about the so-called family of queer people is that the story must continue. I love the motif of that hand-holding, that we reach out our hands from generation to generation.”
“One of the things I love in my own queer friendships is that, for some reason, not everybody is from the same socioeconomic background or the same age or whatever,” he says. “So having friends who are in their 80s, and having friends who are in their 20s and their 40s and 50s, and lots of different genders and races, to me, it’s really, really inspiring. That’s what the world needs, because prejudice doesn’t survive proximity. That’s why I think inclusiveness within our own community is so incredibly important.”
Another upside of being queer? An ability to find humor in the face of hardship. “This is a funny film,” says Scott, who is determined to challenge any misconception that Elsinore is a joyless drama. Throughout, Charleson employs wit and “lots of laughs” to ensure that his heart is never defeated by his diagnosis.
“To my mind, it’s a measure of the humanity of someone, how much they’re able to make a joke about things,” Scott says. “And of course, there’s sadness and tragedy there, but there’s so much fun in it as well, I hope.”
“To be in a rehearsal room and to be creative with other people is what he wanted to do right up until the end of his life,” he adds. “And that’s about enjoyment. That’s not about wallowing in the sadness. That’s about looking towards the light.”
As an out actor, Scott is living in a world that Charleson helped light. He first identified himself publicly as “a gay person” to The Independent in 2013; he was 37 at the time and had, the prior year, won a BAFTA Award for playing James Moriarty on BBC’s Sherlock alongside Benedict Cumberbatch. When asked if he had any regrets about not coming out earlier, Scott pushes back.
“Well, I had [already been out], to be honest. I really had,” Scott says. Prior to Sherlock, “nobody really cared” about his personal life. “I wasn’t really doing interviews and stuff like that.”
“There’s nothing that I regret. I’ve never really been ‘in,’ so to speak,” he says, adding, “I always say there’s a difference between privacy and secrecy. I’m still private, but there’s a difference between those two things.”
Andrew Scott in DRIES VAN NOTEN Full LookQuil Lemons
While Scott has played an impressive variety of characters both gay and straight, his queer roles — particularly his 2023 performance of a lonely screenwriter communing with ghosts in All of Us Strangers — have endeared him to the LGBTQ+ community. He was largely snubbed for that role on the awards circuit. But Elsinore may land differently for industry voters. Trade publications have gauged early Oscar buzz for his performance following the film’s screening at festivals. The talk is more than just trophies. “Will Andrew Scott become the first out gay man to win the best actor Oscar?” The Guardian posits. Indeed, an out man has never taken home Hollywood’s biggest acting prize. When asked about the chance to make history, Scott demurs.
“It’s a weird one to talk about,” he says. “The only thing that I would say is that is a sobering statistic, that that’s never happened before. I’m going to try and get the film out there. I want as many people to see it as possible.”
Queer storytelling is clearly a passion for Scott. In addition to All of Us Strangers, he starred in Ripley, the Netflix adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. And of course, there’s Pride, the 2014 film written by Beresford and inspired by the true story of gay activists who worked to raise funds for the families of striking miners.
For Scott, it was noteworthy to see Pride’s large ensemble of gay characters defy tropes through their diversity. “That’s something that I’m so interested in: What stories are we going to tell about our characteristics and our identities that are beyond our sexuality? Because as I always say, being gay isn’t a flaw, but nor is it a virtue. It’s just part of our nature.”
Andrew Scott at the Out100 photo shootStuart Sox
When it comes to picking a project and playing a character, Scott has specific criteria in mind. “You’re looking for soul, and you’re looking for a real autograph from the writer, real individualistic writing with flair,” he says. Recently, he found that flair with Leo Reich, a comedic multihyphenate he worked with on the 2025 Lena Dunham series Too Much. Scott appears in Reich’s new A24 comedy, It Gets Worse, debuting this fall on Channel 4 and Paramount+, as a therapist with a dominant side. A now-viral clip features Scott spitting in Reich’s mouth and saying, “You’re just a hole for daddy.”
Scott had no qualms in leaning into his sexy side for the project. “It’s subversive and it’s transgressive, and I really love all that kind of stuff,” he says.
“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. 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.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Scott has sparked internet thirst. Previously, fans dubbed him the “hot priest” for his intense chemistry, as a man of the cloth, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character on her acclaimed series Fleabag.
“I don’t sit in that space. I don’t,” he insists with a laugh on being considered a sex symbol. “With Fleabag, that character was so great. I think what was sort of sexy about that was the dynamic between the two characters. Again, it was sort of transgressive, but it was also very human.”
“Sexuality on screen is a really interesting thing to portray and to try and get it right,” he continues. “And sometimes it’s not just about the sex, it’s about the setup and the dynamic and the provocation. 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. 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.”
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Scott also excels at playing it straight — be it in sexuality or comportment. His upcoming projects include the Neon thriller A Place in Hell, which also stars Michelle Williams and Daisy Edgar-Jones, and Netflix’s Walk the Blue Fields, where he plays Emily Blunt’s romantic interest. “I love that ability to be able to move between all these different types of characters. As they say, we contain multitudes,” says Scott, in reference to another gay icon, Walt Whitman.
This year also saw the release of Pressure, a World War II drama that finds Scott portrayinga meteorologist whose conviction to speak truth to power about weather data helped the Allies win D-Day. Scott admires this character for his steadfastness in the face of unpopularity — an honorable trait in 2026 as well. “We live in an age where we are literally looking for likes, like literally, thumbs up, hearts, whatever…. And this is a character who didn’t care about being liked, he cared about being good. I think there’s a lot to learn about that,” he says.
At the time of this September interview, Scott is approaching his 50th birthday, a milestone that invites introspection. He’s proud of how far he’s come. “What feels very good is…to be talking to Out magazine. Probably as a 20-year-old, I wouldn’t have thought that I would be as comfortable as I feel today,” he says.
Reflecting on success, Scott doesn’t mention acting projects. He cites to his found family, a “genuine miracle to me,” he says. “My gay friendships…are just increasingly more and more important, and queer spaces, and just celebrating that part of my life is just completely wonderful.” When asked to name names, the private actor laughs. “They know who they are,” he replies.
“I’m just so grateful to have been born gay,” he declares.
Looking to the next chapter, does Scott have a Hamlet, a grand feat he’d like to accomplish during his lifetime? It all comes back to “To be, or not to be.”
“Shakespeare wrote that beautiful soliloquy not to change the world, but to speak the truth,” Scott says. “And so that’s the only manifesto I have for myself, is to try and tell the truth in as many ways as I can.”
This article is part of OUT’s Nov-Dec 2026 print issue, on newsstands November 3. Support queer media and subscribe — or download the issue through Apple News+, Zinio, Nook, or PressReader starting October 22. And catch Elsinore in theaters beginning November 20.
talent ANDREW SCOTT
photographer QUIL LEMONS @quillemons
photo assistants SAMUEL DOLE @actual_sam_dole THALIA RAMOS @thaliaramos
stylist CHARLIE WARD with SEE MANAGEMENT @charliewardstyles @seemanagement
stylist assistant DEVI PENNY @devipnny
grooming JESSICA ORTIZ @jessica_o_
creative director MIKEY LOMBARDO @djmikeypop
videographer STUART SOX @sox_andthecity
video assistant GRACE GALLETTI @grace.galletti
location JACK STUDIOS MANHATTAN @jackstudios
Go behind the scenes with Andrew Scott
