Andrew Scott finds it best not to analyze why writer-director Steven Zaillian thought he would be perfect to play Tom Ripley, one of pop culture’s most infamous con artists. “It’s always weird finding out what people see in you, particularly when it’s a character like Ripley,” Scott tells Vanity Fair with a laugh.

“I was very determined not to diagnose him with anything,” the actor, best known for his performances in Fleabag and All of Us Strangers, explains. “I think what happens with these famous characters is that people have real strong ideas of who they are. I didn’t want to drown him in any preconceived ideas. Words like sociopath or psychopath or pseudo-sexual killer, all those things are just unhelpful to me. Even though he’s not necessarily always a reliable hero, he’s certainly the hero of the story.”

Nearly seven decades after Patricia Highsmith’s novel first introduced the world to walking red flag Tom Ripley, his grift is still going. The story, which previously inspired the 1999 film starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jude Law, as well as Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, will next be tackled in the Netflix series Ripley. The eight-episode project, which premieres April 4, casts Emma’s Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf—the vagabond heir to a wealthy Manhattan dynasty with whom Ripley becomes obsessed—and Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood, the woman preventing the eponymous fraudster from preserving his place next to her boyfriend.

All three actors spoke to VF about inhabiting the twisted trio in a complex production that spanned nearly a year, from the summer of 2021 to the spring of 2022. “The three of us really picked each other up at different times during the process,” says Fanning. Scott was “the complete antithesis of the character” in real life, she adds: “open and warm and fun.”

There isn’t a trace of their jovial dynamic to be found in the series. Marge and Dickie’s patrician background helps them hide their true feelings about Scott’s interloper. “Their body language, their energy, and the intention is sometimes the complete opposite of what’s coming out of their mouth,” Fanning says. “You can say, ‘Nice to meet you,’ but like, you hate somebody, and the person will feel that. So it was playing with that a lot as Marge: What cards do you give away? When do you give them away?”

Scott, who earned his first screen-producing credit with Ripley, says he was less focused on what separates Marge and Tom than the traits they share. “Marge has allied herself with somebody that he admires and almost wants to be, and that’s a complex feeling to have. He feels like, ‘Well, what has she got that I haven’t got?’” says the actor. “Also, she’s perhaps not the glamorous, secure international figure that he might think. They have a lot in common. His dismissal of her is not because he dislikes her, but because she scrutinizes him in a way that other people don’t. So there’s admiration as well as suspicion.”

If Marge becomes Ripley’s mirror, Dickie is his motive. Flynn, who says via email that working with Scott was a major draw for him, describes the “intense psychological connection” between their characters. “There’s almost a blurred line in terms of their connection, whether it’s romantic or just a friendship with admiration, passing back and forth. But I think there’s more than a normal friendship on both parts, a yearning.”

Adds Scott, “For me, it’s never about playing the disconnection between those people. It’s about playing the attempt at connection. He feels very connected to Dickie, and I think he feels disillusioned by him, ultimately.”

At least one core belief bound all three actors: a strict no-contact policy with anyone who had or would soon play versions of their characters. “Absolutely not,” Scott says firmly. “No, I don’t think that’s a wise thing to do. I played a couple of quite famous literary characters before, and I think the big challenge is to be respectful, but not overly reverent. When I was doing Hamlet or playing Moriarty in Sherlock, it would be very dangerous [to look to other performances] because you want to put your own stamp on it. You’d only just be intimidated by what other people have done, and done brilliantly.”

Flynn, who like his costars consulted the novel throughout production, felt a similar desire to stay in his lane. “It wasn’t going to be useful for me to look at Jude’s performance or to think of the tone of that film, because we were trying to do something quite different,” he says.

Ripley stands apart from previous adaptations thanks to its episodic format, as well as its single-minded character study of the title character—going “as deep as anyone could go,” says Fanning. It’s also shot in stunning black and white by cinematographer Robert Elswit (who won an Oscar for There Will Be Blood). That choice, Fanning says, “lends itself to the mood and the inherent darkness of Andrew’s character,” adding, “I can’t imagine it in color.”

Flynn says the series was pitched by Zaillian as “a mid-century noir thriller,” in the vein of films like Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. The 1999 movie, he explains, “feels very sunny and like a modern film, whereas Steve’s referencing some of the stuff that was being made in the period that the story is set in.”

The series was shot between New York City and Europe, “a tour of the best, most beautiful places in the world,” says Flynn—including the Amalfi Coast, Capri, Rome, and Venice. “Literally everything on screen is there for a reason, and you can feel that,” says Fanning. “It all plays a role—the sets, locations, the way it’s shot. All of the Italian actors are so brilliant. People who have one line are as brilliant as anyone.”

“I promise I’m telling you the truth when I say that I just thought they were the best, most gripping, most extraordinarily well-written scripts I’d ever read, really,” Scott says when asked his initial response to all eight episodes of Ripley.

It’s a sentiment earnestly echoed by both Fanning and Flynn—and a testament to the persistent allure of a good old-fashioned con. “I lean toward [the idea] that people are good, people want to be trusting,” says Fanning. “So when you see a story of somebody preying on somebody’s openness or kindness, that’s frustrating. And juicy.”

Viewers also find various ways to excuse Ripley’s treachery, says Flynn. “I suppose that’s the brilliant thing about a scammer story like this—you’re rooting for somebody who’s committing crimes. Which is [an] amazing kind of feat for a writer to pull off, to trick the audience into cheering on the person who society would deem as evil.”

Not to mention the eat-the-rich mentality that’s always made figures like Ripley feel relatable. “I feel like he’s not somebody who has ever been exposed to great beauty in the same way the Greenleafs are. Having a little bit of money and status means people get access to the things that actually should belong to everybody—great works of art, being able to travel the world, to taste extraordinary food,” Scott says. “I find that side of him really beautiful, that side that’s able to just drown himself in the beauty of the world. He’s a real ace thief in that sense.”

And if, by the series’s end, the audience feels complicit in Ripley’s crimes, that was always part of the con. “He’s got enormous smarts about him. To be able to watch somebody thinking on their feet is always a real treat for audiences,” says Scott. “He’s deeply talented, and talent is very attractive. And the fact that the only people who really know how brilliant he is, is the audience, makes it a real bond.”