Netflix‘s Ripley shows us how a small-time con man like Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) goes from stealing mail from elderly Manhattanites to assuming the identity of the son of a wealthy shipbuilder in the most luxurious rooms in Europe. Of course, a simple case of misunderstanding gives Tom the opportunity to go to Europe, all expenses paid, in the first place. However, Tom Ripley takes his own destiny by boldly reinventing himself and murdering people when necessary.
**Spoilers for the first five episodes of Ripleynow streaming on Netflix**
Yes, Tom Ripley eventually becomes a murderer. In Ripley In episode 3, “III SOMMERSO,” Tom decides to kill Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) with a blunt blow to the head while the two have a tense tete-a-tete on a small boat off the coast of San Remo. Dickie was about to cut off contact with Tom and force him to return to the United States, where the FBI had already been investigating his various acts of mail fraud. While it’s easy enough to kill Dickie, getting rid of his body is much more difficult, leading to a sequence that puts both Tom Ripley and actor Andrew Scott in trouble.
“I think it’s a sequence that really solidifies the tone of the show, which I think is really wonderful in the sense that we really get to spend time watching this character think, you know?” Scott told Jugo Mobile. “He thinks like no other literary hero. I think he thinks in a very particular way and I think that is really pleasing to the public.”
However, things go slightly different for Tom after his second murder in Ripley Episode 5 “V LUCIO”. Dickie Greenleaf’s friend Freddie Miles (Eliot Sumner) confronts Tom for assuming Dickie’s identity (and wealth) and threatens to report him to the police. Tom reacts by hitting an enemy once again, this time with an ashtray, until he is dead. Once again, Tom is left with the “heavy lifting,” in Scott’s words, of disposing of the body.
“They were different [scenes]”I guess, in Tom’s sense, it’s not the first time he’s done something like this,” Scott said, confirming not only that Dickie was Ripley’s first kill, but that he’s not that far out of her league. . dispose of Freddie’s body.
However, mistakes are made when disposing of Freddie Miles’ body, and Andrew Scott told Jugo Mobile he loved that. Ripley did not shy away from showing the mistakes of its main character.
“What I love, mainly about those sequences, are the mistakes he makes or the fact that he has to take the time to think about it. Let us really see that this is not a natural-born killer,” Scott said. “You know, I think sometimes Tom Ripley has kind of a reputation as someone who’s great at doing that kind of thing. And that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“When we meet him at the beginning of the story, he has never murdered anyone and has no intention of doing so. And that happens for a very extraordinary reason, mysterious even to him, I would say, and he’s not… I don’t know, he’s not used to it any more than any of us. He would be used to it.”
So if you go into Ripley expecting the story to be that of a seasoned killer, a deranged sociopath, or an extraordinarily evil character, Andrew Scott begs to differ! What makes Patricia Highsmith’s character so enticing to this day is the fact that she seems normal because a part of her…is normal.
