Interview with spunkrat Reid Scott of ‘American Horror Stories’: Season 3

By creammagazine, January 24, 2024

Reid Scott’s handsome face ought to be familiar to you. Following on from feature roles in comedy series All My Children and My Boys, Scott went on to guest-star as Laura Linney’s trusty oncologist in The Big C, and in between has shot spots for such gritty dramas as CSI:NY, Underbelly (the US version) and Bones. But it is the actor’s role as Dan Egan in the political parody Veep that really got him noticed.

More recently, Reid features in Ryan Murphy’s anthology series, American Horror Stories. In American Horror Stories: Season 3, Episode 2, titled Daphne, he plays a man learning to get along with an advanced digital assistant whom he gets dangerously close to. It’s a tale as old as technology itself — man meets robot; robot gets obsessed with man; and no one is happy in the end.

(Above: Reid Scott gets chatty with an AI assistant, Daphne, voiced by Gwyneth Paltrow, in American Horror Stories: Season 3 on Binge.)

Here, Reid chats with Cream about the credibility of horror, and the new ‘golden age’ of television.

Interview by Antonino Tati

 

Hi Reid. You’ve been appearing on a lot of television, dashing from one series to the next. How difficult is it to keep track of what show you’re working on at any given time?

Well there hasn’t been too much overlap; in fact it’s been quite a nice succession. My Boys wrapped, then I did The Big C for a couple of seasons, and then moved on to Veep. And then bits and pieces from there.

 

It must have been fun being able to get away with virtual murder while playing a conniving character like Dan in ‘Veep’.

I love being able to explore a character like that; to be able to slip in and out of different characteristics is such a thrill. At the same time you get to explore different facets of yourself, which is a wonderful exercise. It feels like you’re in a dreamland.

 

It must be quite therapeutic, too. As humans we tend to wear proverbial masks going about our day-to-day lives, but as an actor you get to take those off and delve into different sides of your personality…

Absolutely, and in the safest way possible! You’re doing it as a job and so you have that bit of separation.

 

Where it’s still regarded as sane, you mean?

[Laughs] Yeah, for a minute or two!

 

 

You had a prominent role in ‘The Big C’, playing Laura Linney’s oncologist.

Yeah, and it was a lot of fun.

 

What’s Laura like to work with?

She’s exactly what you want Laura Linney to be – a consummate professional who takes the craft seriously. But she’s also very approachable, very normal. I was an enormous fan before I even got to work with her. There was a movie she did with Mark Ruffalo – Count On Me – which was one of the reasons I became an actor in the first place. I think the performance she turned in – alongside Mark’s – were two of the finest I’d seen. So it was a real pleasure to work with her.

 

Laura started out on television herself, in the ‘Tales Of The City’ series…

That’s exactly right, and she always talks about that, too. I was asking her, ‘What brought you back to television?’ and she said that the material [The Big C] just really resonated with her. To hear her talk about what she looks for in a role and how she approaches her work was really inspiring – it was like taking a master class. To have worked with her, and Oliver Platt, and John Benjamin Hickey – I learnt so much in two seasons, and I’m sure that my work has changed because of it.

 

That’s great to hear. It seems there’s a lot more credibility attached to television these days, compared to film. Many actors are now moving back and forth between the mediums. Do you think it has a lot to do with scriptwriting loosening up; being more ‘real’?

Absolutely. We have so many networks and studios competing with one another that it’s really been a race to find the best and most legitimate material. Movie writers start to get a foot in television, followed by movie directors and movie actors. I think now, we’re in this golden age of television where it’s really beating out movies in terms of material. TV’s a great place to be – particularly in the company of Showtime and HBO [the latter on which Veep aired in the US while American Horror Stories airs on Hulu / Binge in Australia]. They really do deliver incredible characters that are backed by incredible writing.

 

“I think the worst thing about this business is that, slowly, your private world gets degraded. Sometimes it can be hard to go places without someone – I don’t want to say bothering you, but… interrupting you.”

 

Do you think, though, that TV is getting to a point where things are getting out of hand? Even going back a few years to the likes of ‘Six Feet Under’, ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Big Love’, right through to ‘Breaking Bad’, ‘American Horror Stories’… Do shows like these desensitise society as a whole to subjects such as sex, drugs and death?

That’s a good question, you know. I think it’s sort of a chicken-and-the-egg situation. Does life imitate art or art imitate life? I think if it wasn’t for the fact that society was ready for something like that, those programs wouldn’t have resonated in the first place and wouldn’t have found the viewership that they did. It’s a really good question you raise but I don’t know if I know the answer. For my part, I love the way society and art tend to influence each other back and forth, and I think we’re in a really nice pendulum swing between the two.

 

I suppose if the demand is there from viewers, shows might continue to get more intense.

Exactly.

 

You move around a lot for your work, from L.A. to New York and back. Does it get tiring?

I like going back and forth. I’ve always been a kind of nomad and don’t think I’ve lived anywhere longer than two years. Even if I’m staying in the same city, I need to change apartments or houses because the same walls start to tire me. L.A. is where I do most of my work, but I’m from New York so I tend to go back there a lot to recharge my batteries and realign myself. And to remind myself of why I’m doing this [acting] in the first place.

 

Why are you doing this? What’s your main goal?

You know, I actually started off as a director. I went to film school and moved to New York City, directing plays and short films, even writing plays and films, and I kind of fell into acting by accident. I had a group of friends who were all directors, and in our circle we didn’t really trust the actors that we had auditioned and so we’d cast each other. A professor at my school saw my acting in a play and said, ‘Hey, I can get you an agent’. So I went into acting as a kind of back-up plan.

 

 

What was the first role you landed?

I did a pilot for Steve Levitan – the creator of Modern Family. He hired me to basically play him in a little sit-com. I was terrified because I felt they [the producers] were going to realise at some point that I wasn’t really an actor. I guess I fooled them enough because I’ve been doing this for [a long time] now!

 

“I love horror movies – I’m a big horror buff. In fact, myself and two of my writing partners have written a horror movie that we’re going to try and get made. It’s a classic monster movie.”

 

I thought I’d seen your face around a bit. Weren’t you in a horror film called ‘Amusement’?

Yeah, yeah [laughs]. Amusement was a blast.

 

I’m so glad you didn’t denigrate the horror genre.

I love horror movies – I’m a big horror buff. In fact, myself and two of my writing partners have written a horror movie that we’re going to try and get made. It’s a classic monster movie. The first movie I saw that really got me was Jaws and, ever since then, classic horror movies have always been my favourite. A lot of horror movies these days have a supernatural bent, or a spiritual bent, or a psychotic bent, but we wanted to do the opposite and offer up a real classic horror film. But like any good horror movie, there’s a message and this one’s an environmental one. It’s about a group of friends that go out into the woods on a hunting trip and get a little more than they bargained for…

 

Okay, we won’t ask how the first friend dies. Back to the business at hand, what do you consider to be the worst thing about acting?

I think the worst thing about this business is that, slowly, your private world gets degraded, and that’s a little odd. Sometimes it can be hard to go places without someone – I don’t want to say bothering you, but interrupting you. To me that’s new, and I’m only starting to experience it now. I have friends who have it way worse than I do and while it is flattering it’s still very unusual to be walking down the street and have people come up to you and feel like they know you. But I usually stop and say ‘hi’ because, like I said, it is flattering. But other than that, the business side of this business is rough. You’re working in an industry where as an artist you’re trying to put something forth and nine times out of ten, it’s being rejected. It’s that tenth time that’s such a thrill; the personal coup that you do it for. I tell everybody that basically it’s like being a professional gambler who loves staying in the game long enough to play the hand you want to play when you wanna play it. You’ve got to have thick skin to be working in this industry.

 

 

Would you recommend that actors who are starting out get a handle on other facets of the business – from scriptwriting to shooting and directing; not necessarily as something to fall back on, but as a learning exercise for each area?

Absolutely. There’s no such thing as too much education, no matter what you’re doing. And this is such a technical medium that the more you know about every side of it, the better off you are.

 

‘American Horror Stories’, Season 3, airs on Hulu in the US and Binge in Australia.

 

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