Campbell Scott enjoys upside-down world of Damages
While it doesn’t seem possible that actor Campbell Scott’s career is almost 30 years old, looking over his credits he’s truly done a little bit of everything. From his turn as the bear-loving young man during the onset of AIDS in the film Longtime Companion to co-directing the film Big Night with fellow thespian Stanley Tucci to his stage work in productions such as Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Scott has always been ranked as a high caliber talent. It’s no surprise, then that Scott is currently a series regular on FX’s thrilling Damages working with the likes of Glenn Close as well as Lily Tomlin, Ted Danson and Martin Short.
As Joe Tobin, Scott is the son of a Bernie Madoff-type who is trying to do the right thing but somehow ends up on a not-so-right path, falling off the wagon at times (he’s in AA.) He also may have more secrets than it originally seemed. Scott recently talked to journalists about his experience thus far on the drama series and EDGE’s Jim Halterman was there.
It’s all personal
Having been a fan of Damages, Scott said that in choosing any role, he has a criterion he relies on. "I only do things I’m interested in doing, something as a change for myself; it’s all personal, I guess. When I met the three guys who created the series (Todd A. Kessler, Daniel Zelman, Glenn Kessler) I got excited about it only because I had watched the first season and it seemed like a 13-episode movie to me and that seems to be a cool way to go about it."
Since one of the structures of Damages is to tell the stories out of sequence and to shift gears and change direction in the course of production, Scott says he was warned off the bat that this would be an unconventional environment. Scott said he was told by the producers: "’We don’t know. We want your input. We change our minds a lot. We get excited about developing an idea and then watching it change as it goes,’ which I thought was relatively brave and crazy and that’s exactly what has happened."
In fact, Scott said that things definitely happened at sometimes the last minute but the offspring of actors Colleen Dewhurst and George C. Scott loved everything about it. "Literally a couple nights before," he explained, "you get a piece of information about your character that doesn’t throw off what you’ve laid the foundation for but definitely - just like real life - throws you a curve in the immediate circumstances and that’s fucking fun."
