Dakota Fanning & Andrew Scott may portray characters with a complicated relationship in the new Netflix mini-series ‘Ripley,’ but off-screen their banter is unmatched. The actors sat down with ELLE for a round of Ask Me Anything where Andrew Scott gets honest about his most Irish traits, including his love for Riverdance, and Dakota Fanning confesses who can leave her starstruck. The duo chats about topics such as the resurgence of ‘Twilight’ and the backstory behind Kurt Russell gifting Dakota a horse.

Andrew Scott makes for a captivating killer in the first four episodes of Netflix’s Ripley, streaming now. Dakota Fanning stops by Still Watching to talk about her new spin on Marge Sherwood and how she stayed grounded while transitioning from child star to adult actor.

This certainly isn’t your mother’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Andrew Scott stars as the titular sociopath in Ripley, Netflix’s dark dramatization of Patricia Highsmith’s novel from the 1950s, which takes a decidedly different approach to the source material than Anthony Minghella’s classic 1999 film starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Matt Damon. Written and created by Oscar winner Steven Zaillian, Ripley hews closer to Highsmith’s novel, following striver Tom as he befriends, murders, then impersonates Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), then makes his way through Italy avoiding capture.

For Dakota Fanning, stepping into the suave loafers of Dickie’s girlfriend, Marge Sherwood—a part memorably played by Paltrow—was a thrill from the moment she received the first scripts. “I’m a very fast reader as it is, but this was next level,” she said while appearing on VF’s Still Watching podcast. “I was like, I think you need to wait an hour or two before you respond.”

Although Tom Ripley is painted to be the ultimate outsider, Fanning was drawn to the surprising similarities between Marge and Tom. “I think that, weirdly, they kind of see a weird little piece of themselves in each other, and perhaps that’s why they dislike each other so much right from the start,” says Fanning. “Marge’s vanity sometimes gets in her way a little bit. Tom kind of uses that to ingratiate himself with her, and she kind of falls prey to that.”

Fanning dropped by Still Watching to chat about the first half of the series, this darker take on Tom Ripley, Marge’s opportunism, and how she stayed grounded while transitioning from child star to adult actor.

Vanity Fair: What was your relationship with The Talented Mr. Ripley before jumping onto this project?

Dakota Fanning: I was familiar with the characters, familiar with the material, and wasn’t jumping in totally blind. It was very clear from the beginning that Steve’s version was going to be a very faithful adaptation to the Patricia Highsmith novel. We were also going to get to go more in depth with the characters simply because of the eight-episode-series format. I know that was the big draw for [Steve]—being able to have that time to spend with Tom Ripley, especially, but with everyone.

So, I was excited when I read the scripts. I read them so quickly that I remember thinking, If I email Steve back now, he’s never going to believe that I read them all [laughs].
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In early March, as the collective obsession it spawned was at its height, I had the chance to ask: Have Andrew Scott and Dakota Fanning seen the viral TikTok series “Who TF Did I Marry?”

The actors were seated in a sparsely decorated holding room at a Hollywood screening venue where their new limited series, “Ripley,” was about to be previewed. Nearly seven decades after Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley” first introduced the world to its titular grifter, Tom, the story of one of pop culture’s most infamous pathological liars is now getting an eight-episode treatment on Netflix. And the 50-part social media saga by Reesa Teesa (real name Tareasa Johnson) about a walking red flag — an ex-husband who allegedly made up family members, faked phone conversations and, in their search for a home, duped her with fake bank statements that turned out to be screenshots from Google Images — was further proof that stories of scammers and fraudsters never go out of style.

“Oh, my God, I know!” Fanning said, her eyes wide with excitement. “I wanted to watch that, but haven’t. There are a lot of videos, right?”

“What is this?” Scott asked, curious to understand the enthusiasm.

“It’s this woman who got scammed by her ex and made these videos where she is like filming in the bathroom or her car and telling the story,” Fanning said.

“Oh, wow,” Scott said, brows furrowed.In early March, as the collective obsession it spawned was at its height, I had the chance to ask: Have Andrew Scott and Dakota Fanning seen the viral TikTok series “Who TF Did I Marry?”

The actors were seated in a sparsely decorated holding room at a Hollywood screening venue where their new limited series, “Ripley,” was about to be previewed. Nearly seven decades after Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley” first introduced the world to its titular grifter, Tom, the story of one of pop culture’s most infamous pathological liars is now getting an eight-episode treatment on Netflix. And the 50-part social media saga by Reesa Teesa (real name Tareasa Johnson) about a walking red flag — an ex-husband who allegedly made up family members, faked phone conversations and, in their search for a home, duped her with fake bank statements that turned out to be screenshots from Google Images — was further proof that stories of scammers and fraudsters never go out of style.

“Oh, my God, I know!” Fanning said, her eyes wide with excitement. “I wanted to watch that, but haven’t. There are a lot of videos, right?”

“What is this?” Scott asked, curious to understand the enthusiasm.

“It’s this woman who got scammed by her ex and made these videos where she is like filming in the bathroom or her car and telling the story,” Fanning said.

“Oh, wow,” Scott said, brows furrowed.

The cunning con man who’s brought them together has left a more lasting impression, inspiring the 1960 French film “Purple Noon,” the 1999 vehicle for Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law, and now “Ripley.”

Developed for television by Steven Zaillian (“The Night Of”), the series was originally set up at Showtime before moving to Netflix, with production spanning from summer 2021 to spring 2022. The lavish thriller, which is shot in black and white, stars Scott as the eponymous scam artist; Johnny Flynn (“Emma”) as Dickie Greenleaf, the wayward heir to a wealthy Manhattan dynasty with whom Ripley becomes obsessed; and Fanning as Marge Sherwood, Dickie’s girlfriend, who is suspicious of the new man in town.

The dark, subversive antihero saga begins as Tom is enlisted by Dickie’s father , who mistakenly assumes Tom is a friend of his son , to venture to Italy to cajole him into returning home. Tom becomes infatuated with Dickie and his lifestyle, then kills him to avoid being deserted — and the cover-up spirals from there. It’s an apt parable for the social media age, in which the carefully crafted image can be seductive to a damaging degree. But Zaillian didn’t embark on the adaptation with that in mind.

“It had nothing to do with now,” Zaillian said by telephone. “The big draw for me was to spend more time with this particular character. … I think there’s a lot of things about him that are like all of us. He has aspirations, he has envy, pride — he might have more than we have, or he’s just willing to go further to get it. I think one of the reasons that he’s endured as a character so well over all these years, is because we do relate to him.”
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