Andrew Scott: my thrill over win for 'mad' play

Despite starring in TV hits from Sherlock to Fleabag, the Irish actor always returns to the stage, and it has paid off. He tells Nick Curtis about his shock and delight at being named best actor for playing all the roles in a radical take on Uncle Vanya

- Nick Curtis

ANDREW SCOTT was "really, genuinely thrilled, shocked and surprised" to win the best actor statuLette at the 67th Evening Standard Awards last weekend for his performance in Simon Stephens's Vanya, a one-person adaptation of Chekhov's play. "Our producers Wessex Grove decided that they would put something that is a little bit mad and not necessarily commercial into a West End Theatre," says the 47-year-old when we speak.

"And it was really surprising that so many people came to watch it because it is an unusual idea and it does require an awful lot of hard work from the audience. But we had people saying they'd come from Venezuela and New Zealand to see it."

A lot of younger fans of Scott's TV performances as Moriarty in Sherlock, or the Hot Priest in Fleabag, also came to see him perform eight different characters, male and female, of different ages and social stations, in Vanya.

Starved of the usual camaraderie of an acting company, he chatted to a lot of them at the stage door, and he regards his TV fame as "absolutely a blessing". Doing eight shows a week alone nearly killed him though, he says, and his body "collapsed" after the last night.

The show proved a virtuosic display of actorly skill, but risked looking like a gimmick or an exercise in vanity.

"Yes, exactly," he says. "There had to be a reason for it beyond the opportunity for the actor." And he explains that the concept, and the justification for it, came about because of a mistake.

Stephens had written a "fairly standard version of the play that would have a regular-sized cast" and he, Scott and director Sam Yates were reading it aloud to find which character might suit Scott best. By accident he ended up playing both the central character and his nemesis, arguing with himself.