Andrew Scott Finds an Unlikely D-Day Hero in ‘Pressure'
“I didn’t want him to be interested in being liked. I liked the idea that he was pretty formidable.”
Andrew Scott stars in Pressure as James Stagg, the true life meteorologist who convinced then General Dwight D. Eisenhower to delay D-Day. “The stakes really couldn’t have been higher.”
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Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.
The film is fantastic. I went in knowing nothing about this bit of history. Did you have a similar experience?
Absolutely. I had no idea. I never really thought about the weather in relation to D-Day, or the weather in relation to any movie, actually. It’s funny talking about the weather in a movie because people are like, okay.
So much of history could easily have been different if just the weather were different. Think about Titanic!
That is a very astute point. The weather affects any situation. Everybody’s like, what’s it going to be like on my wedding day? Where am I going to have my lunch? What am I going to wear? Where do I live? How do we live our lives? It’s completely dependent on the weather. So of course, with an invasion like D-Day, there are going to have to be experts who help strategize about what might be the safest and most effective way for hundreds of thousands of people to stage an invasion.
How familiar were you with the material? I know it was a play originally.
Not at all. The screenplay came to me completely fresh. I love the idea that there are, of course, a lot of scenes that are pretty dialogue heavy. But what I think is really special, when I spoke to Anthony [Maras, director] first, was the way they have this incredible footage from World War II that has been remastered. This actual footage of the real soldiers, remastered and expertly woven into footage that we shot. To me, that’s really extraordinary. It’s really big in scale and really minute in scale as well.
The story is so big, the history is so big, but you, Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower, Kerry Condon, all of the actors have a way of making it feel intimate.
Yeah, well, it has to be. You have to understand the human beings at the same time. If you don’t understand that human beings had to make these decisions, to decipher what the future of the world might be, then those decisions feel abstract. What I find very moving about these people is that they had a huge degree of humility. Eisenhower had to make the final decision about when D-Day was going to happen, but he had an enormous amount of respect for Stagg and had to bow down to his expertise. James Stagg was not a war person at all, not a war hero. He was a meteorologist, and that was his passion and his expertise. What I loved about him, not just as a real person but as a cinematic character, was that I didn’t want him to be interested in being liked. I liked the idea that he was pretty formidable, pretty sassy, and not concerned with getting people on his side, but just with getting them to listen to what he had to say.
There’s that moment in the film between him and Eisenhower where Eisenhower wants a definitive answer and the scientist in him just can’t give one.
Yeah. He’s essentially saying, I can’t tell you that. We predict weather, we can’t guarantee it. No matter how powerful you are, you can’t say on Thursday this is definitely going to happen. That’s not how nature works. There has to be a degree of humility. If you’re going to understand the science behind it, you just have to accept that. It’s foolhardy and unheroic to say anything contrary.
And in hindsight, the ramifications of whatever you say in that moment could change history.
Yes, absolutely. The stakes really couldn’t have been higher. This isn’t someone with any war experience. It’s just, OK, what do I do? What I loved about it, and why I think the title of the film is so apt, is that we talk about the meteorological pressure, the wind pressure and the barometric pressure, but there’s also an extraordinary psychological pressure that he was going through. As a cinematic character, because pressure is by its nature about containment, I felt like the character should be very contained for as long as possible. Even as the pressure was building, not just the professional pressure but also through another storyline about his pregnant wife, that’s what makes a true hero: to be able to keep calm and carry on when the stakes are really high.
Where’s the separation between the real person and the character you have to build to make an entertaining film?
My responsibility is to deliver the film character. You have to have a sense of who the real man was, but this is a real man in this particular story. I love the idea of a cinematic character who starts out with a certain degree of distance. I don’t necessarily think all the best cinematic characters are ones that are immediately accessible. I actually think audiences like people who aren’t immediately decipherable. As the story progresses, you think, I sort of like him. I like that he doesn’t care what people think. I like that he isn’t intimidated by these incredibly powerful people. That’s what I love, the difference between a good person and a nice person. I think that makes for a good filmic character.
The casting is perfect because, as an American, we go in knowing Eisenhower is basically a hero. And then you have Brendan Fraser, who is an action star and is everyone’s hero. With Stagg, that heroism is earned.
Yeah, exactly. He’s less familiar, less charming, less everything. That’s the way I wanted people to really listen to what he had to say rather than just how he says it.
Do you take pleasure in playing complicated characters rather than the typical hero type?
I do. If you’re playing a hero, that job is already done for you. The dark side of the thing is what you need to work on. Conversely, if you’re playing a villain, the villainy is already done for you, so it’s the other side you need to work. With Hamlet, you have the moody dark prince, but you have to find the light. In a comedy, you try to find the soul. In this film, it was very important to me that the funny parts landed. Witty is probably a better word for it. You understand the absurdity in the culture clash between the characters. Colonel [Irving] Krick is the American meteorologist, brilliantly played by Chris Messina, who’s a real showman, the meteorologist to the stars. That is just not the way James Stagg rolls. Personality politics are always at play in the halls of power.
And as an American, I mean no disrespect to the history here, but I’m not surprised a British person is obsessed with the weather.
It’s so true. [laughs] In the movie, predicting weather in Palm Springs is not as big a challenge as predicting weather in the Lake District, because we get four seasons in one day. It’s embedded in the culture. In spring in Ireland, when the weather comes out, it sends everybody crazy. We live with the weather so much. I like the fact that people who’ve seen the film are looking at weather differently, being a little more conscious of it, because it’s not just small talk. Even talking about a film that’s about the weather, you think, is that going to be really dry? What’s surprising and delightful for people is that they go, wow, I didn’t understand that’s how they do it. In 1945, they’d call people, get the readings, write it down, put it on WAPS [Wind-Assisted Propulsion Systems]. Now we just look it up on a weather app. For all the weather geeks, it’s the movie of the year.
This film feels like an introduction to a lot of people who don’t know your work. How important is it to you to widen your reach?
If I’m honest, it’s not that important to me, really. I feel if you do work in good faith, it might reach a bigger audience. But if it doesn’t, the audience that might love a film like All of Us Strangers or come see me in a play, where over the whole run 10,000 people might go, is not a less significant audience than the opening weekend of a more commercial movie. What’s interesting to me is not the commerciality or the numbers, but the tone of the movie itself. I’m not interested in doing arts movies just for art’s sake. A pop art movie, a commercial movie, is potentially of similar value to me as an artsy film, as long as there’s something I feel I maybe haven’t explored before or something that’s going to be well executed. It’s never been my methodology to go, let’s do something that’s going to increase my visibility.
You’re one of those actors I get very angry doesn’t have an Oscar nomination. All of Us Strangers, especially. You’re clearly in a moment, and this film is indicative of the caliber of work you’re receiving. How does it feel?
Thank you. It’s a kind of difficult question, isn’t it? I love the people that you get to work with. I feel like I’ve been judicious in some ways about going after stuff I haven’t necessarily done before. I’ve always been a real nerd about writing, and I think the writer is the actor’s great ally. So I’ve kind of always gone where that’s gone. To be able to work with the filmmakers I’ve been able to work with of late has been completely thrilling. I’ve just done a beautiful movie with Emily Blunt based on a Claire Keegan novel [Walk the Blue Fields], and I’ve produced my first film called Elsinore, about part of the life of Ian Charleson, a great Scottish actor. I’m about to work with Justine Triet [director of Anatomy of a Fall]. Those kinds of things make me think, wow, this is really amazing. I’m incredibly grateful and thrilled.
The Comeback just ended, and you were part of the final season. When I spoke with Lisa Kudrow, the way she praised you, she just wanted to stand in your presence. She was like a fangirl. How did it feel to be part of such a moment in pop culture history?
It’s completely thrilling. I think it came about because I was such a big fan of the show. I heard they were doing it again, and I called my agent. I was like, “Do you think there might be anything in it?” Then I found out that Lisa [Kudrow] and Michael Patrick [King] were fans, and they came up with a scenario and we went back and forth. Just to be on that set, just to see her as Valerie [Cherish], I kept having to rearrange my face because she’s such a beautiful, heartbreaking, hysterically wonderful character. It doesn’t matter to me, you know, sometimes you get to a certain position in your career and you think, I’m going to play big leads in big movies. But that to me is not what’s going to be delightful. What’s so delightful is that you get to play a great part. I always say to young screenwriters, if you want to get a good actor, just write great scenes. Sometimes writing three great scenes is going to get you an actor who’s interested in acting rather than a so-called star. Then you get to act with Lisa Kudrow. My God, isn’t she insanely brilliant in that.
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This story was originally published May 27, 2026 at 1:00 AM.