Andrew Scott discusses halting Hamlet performance for man on laptop

All of Us Strangers star Andrew Scott has discussed the time he stopped mid-performance as Hamlet when an audience member got their laptop out.

The Fleabag and Sherlock actor, 47, appeared on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast recently where he was asked about spotting celebrities in the audience while on stage.

“When I was playing Hamlet [2017] I promise you this is true, a guy took out his laptop – not his phone, his laptop – and I was in the middle of ‘to be or f***ing not to be.”

He recalled pausing and having people around him encourage him to “get on with it.” He continued: “I was like, ‘There’s no way’. And [the man] didn’t realise, I stopped for ages,” as Scott demonstrated the stare he gave the man.

The woman beside the man with the laptop appeared to have nudged him which alerted the man to the situation. Scott then demonstrated the man casually reacting and putting his laptop away.

Scott then joked “[The man] was my agent.”

He later revealed that he didn’t have to audition for his starring role in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers. “Straight offer,” the openly gay actor said before adding, “Straight being the operative word.”

In All of Us Strangers, Andrew plays the reclusive Adam who leads a solitary life in his London flat. After meeting his neighbour, Harry (Paul Mescal) he embarks on a new romance. Meanwhile, he goes back and forth between his flat and his childhood home where he encounters his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) who appear as they did the day they died 30 years before.

All of Us Strangers is due to be released in UK cinemas on 26 January 2024.