Andrew Scott On Adam’s Anger When Coming Out to Mum in ‘All Of Us Strangers’

Queer people always worry about coming out to someone. It could be your lover, some of your friends, your distant relatives, or your parents. For Adam, played by the transcendent Andrew Scott, in Andrew Haigh’s All Of Us Strangers, time twists back for Adam to reveal the truth about himself to the parents he lost in his early adolescence. What Scott is able to do in this film is utterly astonishing, and he delivers one of the most delicate and nuanced performances of the year.

The way Adam comes out to Mum (played by a never-better Claire Foy) is almost accidental. On his second visit back to his childhood home, his father (Jamie Bell) isn’t around. Adam gets soaked in the rain, and as he waits for his clothes to dry, Mum prods him more about the time she has missed out on. Adam would be with a smart woman, she’s sure of it, but he reveals, quite simply, that he isn’t involved with a woman since he’s not attracted to them.

Maybe Adam thought that their time apart would automate some sympathy, but Mum launches into a matter-of-fact assault of questions. You’re open about it? Isn’t that like having your cake and eating it? What about this dreadful disease called AIDS? Maybe our parents’ reactions to us being queer or gay is destined to be the same no matter the time or place. Adam spars back, but we hear a rise in Scott’s voice before he shoves it down. Is it difficult for Adam to keep his cool?

“I love that question,” Scott says, thoughtfully. “I think that anger is such a huge part of what he has to deal with. I think it’s very uncomfortable for so many of us. For me, it has been in relation to coming from an Irish-Catholic background where culpability and not rising your head above the pulpit in these situations is very important in these situations. Anger is not allowed really. I definitely do feel like he’s been enraged because she has so much power over him, and she’s coming from a place of ignorance. He’s not speculating about these things anymore, because of his thirty years on this planet that she doesn’t have. It’s from a place of truth. The fact that she is able to speak with such confidence and such prejudice in a presumptuous way makes him very angry. Of course, she is his mother, and he wants her to love him, so it’s such a conflict for him. I like that a little anger is show, because I think that’s how life can manifest itself.”

We hear prejudices, Scott and I suspect, because the loudest people have access to the biggest of microphones.

“Loud, confident, and wrong,” he says with a laugh. “It’s the lack of humility with prejudice that’s probably the most infuriating part. The ease in which you can spout these things is what makes it so hurtful. What I love what Andrew [Haigh] can do is that kind of anger-making character is also a character that has so much redeeming qualities. That dynamic exists in all relationships, so that’s what we have to cope with and also what we adore about so many people. That’s in so many human interactions.”

Intimacy is a driving force for a lot of Haigh’s films. How we settle with it or how it fades from our memories. In our brief conversation, we talked about how a very specific kind of intimacy comes roaring back to Adam when he stumbles into his old room again. Whenever I would visit my mom in her old house, it felt foreign to be back in my old room. I was surrounded by things that I knew were mine, but since I didn’t look at them on a daily basis, it felt strange to be back there. For Adam, it almost felt like a relief, a balm. Scott reveled in establishing that textured sensuality that mingles with sentimentality. Our childhood bedrooms are our first home bases and our first fortresses.

“That was so extraordinary when I went into that room,” Scott says. “Our production designers did such an amazing job of recreating what an 11-year old’s room would look like in the late 1980s. There were so many plastic toys and posters that I took pictures of and sent to my siblings and said, ‘Remember this?! We had this in our room.’ When you are a kid, you have an awareness of the height of the walls above you, and I don’t think we have that same sense when we are adults. Or you would put stickers on the ceiling, and running your fingers along those is such a memory. There’s a beautiful part of the movie where I wanted to play with the wallpaper, and Andrew picked it up for me. Your bedroom is your kingdom–your place of sanctuary. It’s your only private space in your childhood home, but when you’re an adult, you have so many places to go. That’s a very precious place when you’re a kid. It was potent for me, and, thinking about it now, makes me a bit emotional. That sensuality is very important. The smell of your father’s sweater when he gives you a hug or your mother’s perfume. Or the coldness of the tiles when you go into the bathroom at night or when you sneak down when you’re supposed to be in bed. All those things are so potent and important. The fact that we shot it in Andrew’s childhood home really lent a responsibility to the authenticity. It’s not dissimilar to the house that I grew up in in the suburbs, so that was a very evocative set for me.”

All Of Us Strangers is in theaters now.