‘Ripley’ Creator Steven Zaillian Reveals Eliot Sumner Was One of the Only Actors Auditioning for Freddie Miles Not “Doing a Philip Seymour Hoffman Impression”

Netflix’s new thriller Ripley is a exquisite adaptation of a story many cinephiles already know well: Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. The 1955 novel sparked a series of books about the titular Ripley as well as several film adaptations, including Anthony Minghella’s beloved 1999 movie starring Matt Damon as the shifty scene-stealer. Netflix’s version — a black and white limited series written and directed by Steven Zaillian — eschews the golden technicolor of the Minghella film for stark black and white visuals. Ripley also amplifies conman Tom Ripley’s (Andrew Scott) own sense of paranoia, as well as his cunning cruelty. While Matt Damon played Ripley with a touch of naiveté, Scott’s version is a cold-hearted schemer from the jump.

However, the place where Netflix’s Ripley might differ the most from the iconic ’90s film is in the casting of one Freddie Miles. Philip Seymour Hoffman played Dickie Greenleaf’s rich, clever friend in The Talented Mr. Ripley, but Brit Eliot Sumner inhabits the role in Ripley, and the two interpretations are radically different.

It’s not just that Sumner is British and Hoffman was American; Philip Seymour Hoffman portrayed Freddie as a portly, womanizing bon vivant. His dramatic entrance crescendoes with him musing, “Don’t you just want to fuck every woman you see just once?”

Eliot Sumner, on the other hand, is the transgender son of British artists and celebrities Sting and Trudie Styler. He plays Freddie as a European sophisticate, all high brow connections and sly, studying stares.

Ripley writer, director, and creator Steven Zaillian told Decider that he specifically cast Sumner because he was so different from Philip Seymour Hoffman — and the majority of actors auditioning for the part.

“I auditioned literally 200 people [for that part] and I would say 95% of those people were doing a [Philip Seymour] Hoffman impression,” Zaillian said. “You know, he was so good in that movie. He’s indelible to people in that in that part, that when actors came to read for the part, they kind of did him. And Eliot didn’t.”

As much as Zaillian loved Hoffman’s interpretation of Freddie, he adored the fact that Sumner approached Freddie as a “sophisticated British person.”

“It was so fresh, and to me, like, ‘Oh, this is a way of doing this character in a completely different way, but just as menacing and just as threatening, not in an obnoxious loud way, but in a kind of quiet, sophisticated way,'” Zaillian said.

“So in my mind, Freddie is the most sophisticated character in the whole story” — which is why Freddie Miles is such a great foil to the pretender Tom Ripley —  “and I think what Eliot was doing in the audition, he brought to the entire part, and I just think it’s great.”

Ripley premieres on Netflix tomorrow, Thursday, April 4.