It’s tempting to think that Dougray Scott conjured the icy rain and steel-grey skies covering a usually sunny Los Angeles. While storms of many kinds tend to brew around him on screen, in person the 45-year-old Scot conveys the same alarming calm found in the centre of a hurricane. Sometimes that calm is seething or sinister, as in his rogues gallery of villains in films such as Mission: Impossible 2, Hitman and New Town Killers; sometimes it’s romantic and seductive, as in his big-screen break as Prince Henry opposite Drew Barrymore in Ever After or when snogging Teri Hatcher in the third season of Desperate Housewives. Whether charming or deadly — or both — this son of Fife and Hollywood resident is low-key and in control.
And now he is saving the world, or at least what’s left of it. Scott plays Bill Masen in the latest BBC adaptation of John Wyndham’s classic 1951 sci-fi novel, Day of the Triffids, a mash-up of Cold War paranoia, post-apocalyptic morality and man-eating foliage. The triffids, plants bioengineered in the Soviet Union, turn out to be aggressive, intelligent and fond of human flesh. Their oil also turns out to be an excellent source of fuel and corporate profit. “I remember the ‘clak clak clak’ noise of the triffids,” Scott says of the 1981 BBC television serial. “I was terrified but an audience is just going to laugh at it now. You have to make it believable to an audience today, which entails lots of CGI. That’s why the production was so expensive. “I thought [filming] Triffids would be fun, but you have to work incredibly hard to imagine what you’re supposed to be seeing,” Scott explains. “It’s really tough. You’re busy reacting to something that isn’t there, while at the same time having this relationship with the other actors. Your concentration levels have to be incredibly high. You’ve really got to dive into it, because if you don’t believe it the audience isn’t going to believe it.”
First adapted for BBC radio in 1953, there is a Day of the Triffids for every generation, including the campy 1962 film that transformed triffids from catastrophes of bioengineering into space aliens, followed by the 1981 serial (rebroadcast in 2006). Scott says that the new two-part epic does more than just upgrade the special effects, delving into topical issues of genetic modification, the breakdown of society, survival and morality in times of crisis.
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While CGI renderings of the triffids as well as of a post-apocalyptic London are a major draw for sci-fi fans, Scott was sold on the human aspects of the script. For him, the relationship between his character, Masen, and his co-survivor Josella Playton (Joely Richardson, joining a blue-chip star roster including Eddie Izzard, Brian Cox and Vanessa Redgrave) anchored the mayhem. “It’s obviously got great special effects and suspense,” he says, “but you also have the drama of the characters, which was very important to me, especially the relationship between Bill and Jo and the journey they have together.”
Scott went to the source in preparing for the role, bypassing the earlier mini-series in favour of revisiting the original novel.
“[Bill] just came off the pages for me,” he says. “When you have a novel to refer to you can find clues as to where this person comes from, not just physically but emotionally. What I got from John Wyndham’s novel was a great sense of loneliness about this character.”
Wyndham’s original scenario has been pepped up, however. For example, Masen is no longer a lowly triffid-farm worker but was given a PhD as “the world’s premier authority” within the triffid-industrial complex. Josella — a stylish but rather helpless novelist in the original — acquires a backbone and a new career as a BBC correspondent. In addition, Masen’s father, who was dead in previous adaptations and in the original bestseller, has been brought to life by Cox, playing a fellow scientist who joins forces with his estranged son to eradicate the carnivorous weed.
But the most important change is not that Masen is now a doctor or no longer an orphan: “Bill Masen is Scottish,” he says, “which is good.” Since Scott was born in Glenrothes, is a Hibernian supporter and was once frequently likened to a young Sean Connery, the change makes sense. “I’m accused of being melancholic,” Scott says. “I’m not f****** melancholic. I’m from Fife.”
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Acting wasn’t an obvious option. “The opportunities where I grew up were working in the dockyards, one of the trades like plumber or electrician, or I could have gone into the Army or the Navy.” Instead, he graduated from the Welsh College of Music and Drama in 1989 with the Most Promising Drama Student Award and an insight that has served him well.
“The first best lesson I had about acting was through my father,” he says. “With him being a salesman, his life was all about presenting himself a certain way. No matter what he was feeling on that particular day, he walked into a shop to sell his fridges and freezers. People always want to buy stuff from people who are friendly and warm and happy and up. And that’s the same for me about characters, what people like to present to other people is often at odds with what they’re feeling inside. That’s what makes human beings fascinating to me .”
In 2005 he divorced his first wife Sarah Trevis and admits that the ensuing time apart from his 11-year-old twins was difficult (he is now married to the actress Claire Forlani, whom Scott calls “the most beautiful woman in the world”). “It’s tough, especially with divorce,” he says. “I don’t want to go into it, but it’s not easy. Which is why I try to work in London. It gives me an opportunity to see the kids more and it’s where I’m most comfortable and at my best. I think of London as my home because that is where my children are.”
Talking about his son and daughter Scott grows briefly introspective. “I’m naturally reflective anyway,” he says. “I listen to Scottish folk music. People go, ‘It’s so depressing!’ No! It makes me feel really happy.”
Laughing, he rises from the table, calmly preparing to step out into the storm. “I’m just low-key. I know that. I used to say, ‘No, no, I’m not.’ But I guess now I am who I am.”
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The Day of the Triffids is on BBC One on Dec 28 and 29 at 9pm
