Andrew Scott may have risen to wider acclaim as the instantly iconic “Hot Priest” of “Fleabag” fame, but the Irish actor has spent the following years working through significantly darker, tougher material. In 2023, for instance, there was his shattering turn in Andrew Haigh’s gut-punch “All of Us Strangers,” followed by a remarkable one-man performance in the latest staging of “Uncle Vanya” (this one known simply as “Vanya”). Later, there was his slippery small-screen “Ripley” and a supporting stint as Richard Rodgers in last year’s “Blue Moon.”

Now, Scott is back on the big screen with what many are hailing — like our own Anne Thompson and the good people of the TIFF audience — as his next big contending role. Funny thing, though, because Scott’s turn in Simon Stone’s “Elsinore” is really about the biggest role of another actor’s life.

In the heart-wrenching fact-based drama, Scott stars as “Chariots of Fire” star Ian Charleson who, back in 1989, fought to play the role of Hamlet at the National Theatre (his lifelong dream) while fighting complications from HIV. As Scott told Thompson at this year’s Telluride Film Festival, he knew Hamlet. Charleson was something else.

Scott has played Hamlet more than any other character. He once played a three-hour-and-50-minute version of “Hamlet” eight times a week. “Once you play that part, everything else is a walk in the park,” he said. “That’s the great training of it.”

The hard thing for Scott to shake was his own interpretation of the role, to apply it to what Charleson endured during rehearsals and performances of material that held a different kind of resonance for him. “That was difficult to unlearn,” he said, “what my version of it would be. And to try and imagine when you’re talking about ‘to be or not to be, to live or to die,’ when you feel like it could be a matter of weeks or months before that really is ‘the undiscovered country from which no traveler returns.’”

The film also stars Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Luke Thompson, David Dawson, Matthew Beard, Joe Locke, Monica Dolan, Georgie Glen, Sadie Soverall, Adeel Akhtar, Dickie Beau, Kadiff Kirwan, Juliet Stevenson, and Peter Mullan.

Focus Features will release “Elsinore” in theaters on Friday, November 20. Check out the film’s first trailer below.