ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Ripley star Dakota Fanning about the Netflix adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel. The actress spoke about acting alongside Andrew Scott and being the next person to take on the role of Marge Sherwood. The series is set to debut on the streaming platform on April 4.
“In the series, Tom Ripley, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York, is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy to try to convince his vagabond son Dickie Greenleaf to return home,” reads the show‘s synopsis. “Tom’s acceptance of the job is the first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud, and murder. Meanwhile, Marge Sherwood, an American living in Italy, suspects darker motives underlie Tom’s affability.”
Tyler Treese: I wanted to ask you about working with Andrew Scott because — and I mean this in the biggest compliment — you both have a sort of “anti-chemistry” in your scenes. They’re so tense and awkward, there’s all this fake pleasantry. How was it finding that back-and-forth with him? Because those scenes are such a standout.
Dakota Fanning: I like that! “Anti-chemistry.” That’s a good way to put it. Well, we could only create the anti-chemistry because we had real chemistry as friends, you know? So it made it fun to do. I was super excited by getting to do those scenes with Andrew and to get to play a character that kind of sees Tom Ripley for who he really is and doesn’t trust him and is able to explore that dynamic.
I was very excited not to have to play somebody who was totally duped by him the whole time, to actually be able to kind of go toe-to-toe and, like you said, have all of that tension and the pleasantries where you’re saying something with a smile, but the intention behind it is like, “I hope I never see you again, and you leave forever.” That’s sort of how … they have a very “frenemy” relationship, I think. I loved it. And I love Andrew and I loved working with him. We went down this road together, and it was a long journey, and it was challenging and fun and hard and all the things. It was everything. I just couldn’t have asked for a better person to get to work with.
What I love about Ripley being a series is you get a lot of time with this character. It’s not just one or two scenes like with a movie. What did you like most about having so much meat and it being this eight-hour series?
I loved it. I mean, I think that’s the best part about this medium, that you have more time to go deeper with the characters and you get to really see details that you sometimes can’t fit into a two-hour film. So I know that was really important to Steve [Zaillian, director] and a big draw for him. He wanted all of that time to be able to tell this story and to adapt Patricia Highsmith’s novel, and I certainly can’t imagine our interpretation any other way than how it is. It’s so special to get to have so much time to explore the motives and the intentions and each character pretty fully.
There’s been such a great history of Marge Sherwood on screen with Marie Laforêt and Gwyneth Paltrow. What does it mean for you to add your own take and add to that history?
Oh, I haven’t even thought about it like that, but that’s a nice way of putting it. Yeah, I got to add my own, I got to do just that. I got to add my Marge to the list, and it’s an incredible list to be a part of. Everyone’s done something very different and been a part of a different vibe with these characters. I’m thrilled to join that group with my Marge. [Laughs].
