Filmed in black-and-white, Steven Zaillian’s Ripley vividly renders the world of novelist Patricia Highsmith’s masterwork in stunning contrasts. But Eliot Sumner has always been more captivated by the enigmatic grifter’s shades of gray. Over the titular character’s many iterations across page and screen, Sumner says it’s the “thematic combinations of envy, obsession, and fantasy” that have kept audiences — including him — returning to Tom Ripley time and again. “There’s something innately human about him,” Sumner tells Tudum. “From his perspective, the world around him is out of reach, so he has to steal it. And I don’t think that I’m alone when I say in a strange way you are rooting for him to get away with it.”

This moral ambiguity courses through the limited drama series from Academy Award-winning Zaillian, which stars Andrew Scott as Ripley. But Sumner’s character, Freddie Miles — a friend of Ripley’s fixation Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and a foil to Ripley — isn’t conflicted at all. “Freddie is this posh boarding school guy living abroad who’s unapologetically well off, and most of all he’s everything Tom Ripley hates,” Sumner says. “I found that very, very fun to play.” 

Sumner took his own approach in the audition, reinventing the character in the image of the “thousands of Freddies [he’s] come across” in his life. The description “said he was a loud American and I decided to make him a very observant, arrogant English person and see how that went,” he says. “I really thought, it’s very nice of them to give me a shot, but I wasn’t going to get it.”

Of course, Sumner did get it, propelling him into one of his first major acting roles and a months-long shoot in Italy among actors and creators he’s long admired. “I still can’t really believe it,” he says. “It’s a dream come true.” Sumner, who was born in northern Italy to parents Sting and Trudie Styler, instantly felt at ease on set in Rome, speaking Italian and settling into an apartment in the Trastevere neighborhood — despite the challenges of filming during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I felt so lucky to be working instead of just being at home on my own playing guitar,” he says. “None of us had the opportunity to be around one another in real life [due to the pandemic], so everyone on set was hungry for it, and we just had so much fun.” 

The experience, however exhilarating, was also quite daunting for Sumner, as a pivotal confrontation between Freddie and Tom was shot on the first day of production. “I’m not very experienced,” Sumner admits. “This was my second big acting job, and Andrew has obviously been doing this for a really long time. It takes me a minute to get comfortable with people because I’m quite a shy person.” Freddie, however, couldn’t be more different. Fueled by arrogance and entitlement, the character bullies his way into Ripley’s life at his own peril, allowing Sumner to relish the space between personhood and performance. “That’s why I gravitate toward acting anyway. It brings me out of myself,” Eliot says. 

But during certain moments on set, when doubt would creep in, Sumner found resonance in an unexpected place. “There were days where I felt like Tom Ripley, and I had this imposter syndrome of: ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ ” he recalls. Acting is still relatively new for Sumner, whose first love is music. He’s been writing and performing under various monikers since he was a teenager, most recently dropping acclaimed immersive house and techno records as Vaal. “I have always made music and I will always make music,” Sumner says. “But I find that doing that full time you can’t really escape yourself. With acting, it’s a safe space to go explore and express things that need to be exorcised.”

Sumner plans to keep pursuing both passions — and he has quite the blueprint to pull from, as his father has moved seamlessly between both worlds throughout his career. “He’s one of my best friends. We share music together, and he’s very supportive,” Sumner says of their relationship. “I haven’t shown him Ripley yet, but I’m looking forward to.”

And he’ll have even more to share in the coming months, as Sumner stars in Cry Wolf, a forthcoming Swedish action thriller series, in the lead role. It’s a project he couldn’t have tackled without Ripley, which “gave [him] the boost” to pursue the next acting challenge. “My standards are fucked now because everything on Ripley was just mind-blowingly amazing,” Sumner says. “I really enjoyed every single day and loved working with the team. It was the best thing to have ever happened to me.”

Ripley is now streaming on Netflix.