In Sherlock, he plays about as unconventional a Moriarty as we’ve seen to date. But one of his earliest screen acting jobs was as one of the many filming the Omaha Beach scene that opened Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Scott’s role is referred to on IMDB simply as ‘Soldier on the Beach’. We’ve always wondered, then, what’s it actually like to be an extra in the midst of such a seemingly chaotic scene? Fortunately, Andrew Scott told us. “I have to say it was something that I still really remember. We shot it in Curracloe Beach in South Ireland, so there were a group of us that were working in the theatre in Ireland. We went down, and I’ll never forget the day. There was so much smoke. As far as the eye could see, it was just army guys. The sequence, and it was a very simple sequence, really, was us coming from a boat on D-Day. It was absolutely extraordinary, the atmosphere. We had a very specific route to take, amongst all the stunt guys. The stunt guys, some had squibs, some had fake limbs. It was so well choreographed. It took two weeks to do, and afterwards, it was extraordinary [to watch].” When the cameras rolled, though, things were nowhere near as clear. “Filming it, you couldn’t see the camera, you couldn’t see Spielberg, and you had no idea of the camerawork. You had no idea where they were. It was just you heard, ‘ACTION!’, and you had the sound of explosions, had dirt flying in your face, and you couldn’t really see anything. You kind of knew that, when it was edited together, that it was going to be extraordinary, though. It was an amazing experience”. Sherlock screens on Sunday 15th January. A full interview with Andrew Scott will be live on the site tomorrow. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
