In ELSINORE, Andrew Scott takes on the role of Ian Charleson, capturing the actor as he prepared to play Hamlet while quietly living with AIDS. Charleson was also a gay actor navigating a profession where being open about his sexuality could have derailed his career — a reality Scott, who came out publicly in a 2013 interview with The Independent, feels deeply connected to. For him, the role carries a weight that goes far beyond craft. He has spent his life in the theater, and stepping into a part that Charleson and his peers would never have been offered as working actors of their era is, in his words, still profoundly moving.

At the same time, Scott was determined not to let the film collapse Charleson’s story into his illness. He wanted audiences to see a man who was trying to live, not one being mourned in advance — someone full of vitality and humor who happened to accomplish something extraordinary, rather than a figure defined by his death. That instinct shaped how Scott approached the physical and emotional demands of playing Hamlet this time around too. He was adamant that the film reject any polite, tidy image of theater as a genteel pursuit capped off with a cocktail afterward. Instead, he wanted to convey just how punishing and Olympian the work really is — a truth that often goes unseen by audiences.

Underscoring all of this was Scott’s own grief, having lost his mother a year or two before making the film. That loss became part of the emotional undercurrent running through the performance. ELSINORE opens in theaters on November 20.