During the 70th BFI London Film Festival, acclaimed Irish actor Andrew Scott spoke about his forthcoming film Elsinore. The picture follows the final months of Scottish performer Ian Charleson, who famously staged Hamlet at the National Theatre while battling a late-stage AIDS diagnosis. Scott’s comments turned a promotional interview into a wider meditation on why the Stonewall riots remain a pivotal touchstone for the LGBTQ+ community.
The film and the personal connection
Scott, who turned 50 this October, described Charleson’s courage as a “life-loving” act, noting that the actor chose to “nail his colours to the mast” despite knowing the role would hasten his decline. In a recent Vogue conversation, Scott explained that growing up in Dublin he witnessed a “conspiracy of silence” around sexuality and the emerging AIDS epidemic. He added that today’s young gay people experience a freedom his generation could scarcely imagine.
For Scott, the relevance of Elsinore extends beyond a biographical drama. He argued that contemporary queer narratives—such as Heartstopper or Red, White & Royal Blue—must be balanced with the harsher chapters of history. “The shame does not lie with gay people,” he said, “it belongs to the institutions that ignored the crisis and to a society that perpetuated prejudice.”
Historical forces that shaped pre-Stonewall oppression
Before the midnight clash at the Stonewall Inn in 1969, LGBTQ+ individuals faced a cascade of official condemnations. In the United States, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1973, meaning that at the moment of the riots the medical establishment still deemed queer identity an illness. This classification justified invasive “treatments” ranging from electro-shock therapy paired with same-sex imagery to drug-induced nausea, and even lobotomies. These procedures were not intended to heal a disease; they aimed to eradicate an essential aspect of a person’s being.
Government action was equally punitive. During the 1950s, the Lavender Scare saw thousands of gay and lesbian federal employees dismissed or forced to resign after Executive Order 10450, signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, codified the exclusion of homosexuals from civil service. The impact rippled into other professions—teachers, doctors, lawyers and military personnel could lose their livelihoods without any legal protection.
Police agencies also weaponized their authority. Entrapment operations lured men into compromising situations, only to arrest them later. The resulting public exposure could ruin careers, shatter families and, in many cases, drive victims to suicide. In New York City, the State Liquor Authority used vague “disorderly establishment” rules to threaten bars that served gay patrons. The Mattachine Society’s 1966 “Sip-In” at Julius’ Bar directly challenged this harassment, setting a tone that would culminate in the Stonewall uprising three years later.
Violence against queer people was pervasive, yet reliable hate-crime statistics were not gathered until 1990. Countless assaults, robberies, sexual attacks and murders went undocumented because victims feared reporting to a police force that might arrest them instead of protect them. The silence surrounding these crimes amplified the sense of isolation within the community.
The AIDS epidemic and its cultural reverberations
When the AIDS crisis began in the early 1980s, it struck the LGBTQ+ community with devastating speed. The disease was framed not as a public-health emergency but as a moral judgment against gay men. Families often rejected dying relatives; hospitals struggled with stigma, and some funeral homes refused to handle bodies. In the face of institutional abandonment, queer activists organized grassroots care networks, demanded research funding, and fought for the right to live and mourn with dignity.
Scott highlighted that the terror of this period stemmed from the pervasive silence: “There was no information, no help, all this silence. The terror of that silence is what offends, and that is where the shame should lie.” He contrasted the historic suppression with the present moment, where representation on screen and in politics has expanded dramatically, yet he warned against allowing celebratory narratives to eclipse the darker chapters.
Having lived through the tail end of the crisis, Scott recalled being 18 when Stonewall erupted. He described the participants not as future icons but as ordinary people exhausted by criminalization, medical pathologisation, and the constant threat of ruin. Their demand was simple: the right to exist openly, honestly, and without fear. This yearning powered the formation of the Gay Liberation Front, early Pride marches and the broader movement that eventually secured marriage equality and broader social acceptance.
In summarising his perspective, Scott urged audiences to remember that the legacy of Stonewall is inseparable from the decades of oppression that preceded it. Recognising the full scope of that history—mental-health misdiagnoses, governmental purges, police entrapment, and the AIDS tragedy—ensures that the victories of today are rooted in an honest appraisal of the past.
