“How Complicated Can It Be to Get Rid of a Body?”: How Andrew Scott and Steven Zaillian Pulled Off ‘Ripley’ Episode 3’s Tense Boat Sequence

Netflix‘s new show Ripley retells the story of one Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott), a lowly 1950s Manhattan grifter who finds his fortunes turned upside down when a wealthy shipowner inexplicably hires him to travel to the Amalfi Coast to coax his poor little rich boy son, Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), home at last. Tom initially takes full advantage of the opportunity, reveling in his all-expense paid journey on a luxury liner and the Orient Express. However, when Tom meets Dickie and his girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning), the situation becomes more complicated. Tom becomes fixated on Dickie — Sexually? Sure. Obsessively? Definitely. — which sets off a chain of events that escalate to deadly ends.

Tom Ripley crosses the line from petty cons to blood-chilling crime in Ripley Episode 3 “III – Sommerso.” Dickie has invited Tom to San Remo. Tom imagines that Dickie’s plan is to cast him off, but with a confrontation on a rented boat at sea comes a violent crescendo.

**Spoilers for Ripley Episode 3 “III – Sommerso,” now streaming on Netflix**

Fans of either Patricia Highsmith’s original 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley or its many adaptations will have undoubtedly already known what was coming. Tom murders Dickie on the boat by bludgeoning him with an oar. He then disposes of the body and steals Dickie’s identity, setting off a string of even more tense events in various gorgeous European locales.

However, Netflix’s Ripley throws a curveball when it comes to audience expectations. Creator, writer, and director Steven Zaillian follows the prelude to the murder, the crime itself, and the chaotic coverup in essentially real time. It’s a choice that continually ratchets up tension while putting series star Andrew Scott through the proverbial wringer.

“I think the sheer physicality of it was the most daunting part,” Andrew Scott told Decider about the sequence, which lasts well over 20 minutes of airtime. “You know just having to do the sequences over and over and over again. Obviously, you don’t get things in one take and Steve likes to do a lot of takes.”

Steven Zaillian told Decider that he got the inspiration for his specific approach — complete with Ripley going from leisurely smoking a cigarette while burning an anchor rope to desperately gasping for air in the water — straight from Highsmith’s classic novel.

“We get to really spend time with seeing this character think, you know? He thinks like no other literary hero.”

Ripley star Andrew Scott

“Well, I mean, if you read the book, it’s not that different in the book. I mean, she spends a lot of time on that boat,” Zaillian said. “That was one of  reasons that I actually wanted to do this as a series… I would have enough time to do it as a set piece and do it in real time and to show basically, it’s easier to kill somebody than it is to get rid of a body.”

“How complicated can it be to get rid of a body when it’s in a boat next to you? How hard can it be? Well, it’s really hard and it’s really heavy.”

Scott confirmed to Decider that the whole set piece was a massive physical test for him. “Just the sheer effort when you’ve been swimming around in deep water, trying to get back up on a boat takes a lot of effort, and lifting rocks. It was trying to do all those things that he had to do without giving the ball away,” he said. “It’s just physically, you know, it requires a lot of physical stamina.”

“And Andrew, he did it,” Zaillian said, singing his leading man’s praises to Decider. “I mean, he had to do all of those things. He had to remember the order of those things. He had to do it over and over and over. And he has to do it without any dialogue.”

“And, yes, we have editing that we do. But he did it for real, like from start to finish over and over and over. And he was he was a good sport about it. He was and he was very good at it.”

For his part, Andrew Scott believed that the hard work was worth it all because of what it revealed about the character of Ripley.

“I think it’s really fascinating for the audience,” Scott said. “And I think it’s a sequence that really solidifies the tone of the show, which I think is really, really wonderful in the sense that we get to really spend time with seeing this character think, you know? He thinks like no other literary hero. I think he thinks in a very particular way and I think that’s really pleasurable for an audience.”

“So it required a huge amount of work, but it’s an honor to be able to do that kind of work.”

So if you take one thing from Netflix’s Ripley, it’s that Andrew Scott put in the work. And if you take two things, the second should be that it’s really, really, really hard to get rid of a dead body.