Andrew Scott is glad that audiences can watch gay people fall in love, find happiness and get their happy endings. He also believes the difficult chapters of LGBTQ+ history deserve to be remembered.
Speaking at his October 8 Screen Talk at the BFI London Film Festival, the actor welcomed joyful productions including Heated Rivalry, Heartstopper and Red, White & Royal Blue. As BFI’s account of the conversation makes clear, he sees value in a wide range of queer stories.
But Scott expressed concern that a reluctance to revisit the AIDS crisis can sometimes involve shame. He argued that responsibility belongs with governments that ignored the crisis and the stigma and prejudice surrounding it.
“That’s someone else’s shame,” he said, in remarks reported by Out.
It is an important distinction. Gay men who became ill, lost partners or faced rejection did not create the hostility they encountered. Remembering their lives need not mean accepting the shame imposed on them.
Scott’s latest film, Elsinore, gives that history a human face. He plays Ian Charleson, the Scottish actor known for Chariots of Fire who performed Hamlet at the National Theatre in 1989 while seriously ill with AIDS.
The film opened this year’s London festival on October 7. Scott, who also serves as a producer, has described the project as a love letter to actors and the theatre.
For viewers who lived through the epidemic, such stories can bring back memories of friends and lovers whose lives extended far beyond an illness. For younger audiences, they can help turn an unfamiliar period into people, relationships and experiences worth understanding.
None of that requires choosing between romance and remembrance. A joyful series can offer escape, possibility and pleasure. A historical drama can preserve experiences that might otherwise fade from view.
Scott welcomes the growing variety of gay stories on screen. His latest comments make a case for keeping that variety broad enough to include both the happiness we want to see and the people we must not forget.
📷 Crave / StudioCanal
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