RIPLEY PRODUCTION
whose previous credits include There Will Be Blood and Boogie Nights . “He told me, I’m starting over – I’m doing the Patricia Highsmith version of who Ripley was. Matt Damon’s Ripley was a charming college boy who inadvertently made some stupid choices, and he wasn’t that talented at all. “But in Steve’s take on it – which I understood after we spoke about it and I read the books – Ripley’s talent was that he could have a five-minute conversation with you and knew exactly who you were, and how to manipulate you. He was a wonderful con man, probably the smartest person in most rooms he walked into, and understood human nature. That is a great talent.”
Zaillian wanted to scratch beneath the surface, exploring Ripley’s inner emotional workings and his evolution as a character. Partly, this is achieved through the visual design of the series, which communicates the change in Ripley as he finds his footing in a rarefied new world; but it’s also helped by the simple fact Zaillian and his team had nearly eight hours of storytelling time at their disposal. “I think that’s what he loved about the eight-episode idea,” reflects Elswit. “It was an 860-page script and gave us space to show Ripley’s emotional connection to what he sees around him – falling in love with Italy, the art, the architecture and that lifestyle; but
it also meant that we could show how his mind worked. “Steve was interested in Ripley’s ability to improvise when things go wrong; the way he has to constantly figure out what to do next. I remember reading the part of the script where he kills Freddie and drops the body off, but realises he’s left the kid’s passport in his pocket, so he has to go back and get it. We follow his rhythm: him going back upstairs, to the cab, the whole journey – I didn’t expect we’d actually include that, but Steve was adamant. He wanted to show every bit of Ripley’s improvisation; how his killing wasn’t premeditated. These details and transitionary moments became an obsessive focus, whether watching
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