Summerwater's Dougray Scott hits out at Reform and Nigel Farage's rhetoric: "Utterly disgusting"

Dougray Scott has described the language used by Reform UK and its leader Nigel Farage around immigration as "utterly disgusting and distasteful".

The Fife-born actor – who you might recognise from Mission: Impossible 2, Irvine Welsh's Crime and Desperate Housewives – was speaking about his latest work, Channel 4 drama Summerwater, which adapts Sarah Moss's acclaimed novel and follows the rising tensions between the inhabitants of a Scottish holiday park over a 24–hour period.

While most of the holiday-goers are white British, Anna Próchniak's Alina – a Polish waitress staying in one of the cabins with her family – becomes a point of friction, in a series described as "a riveting portrait of the divided nation that is modern Britain".

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Scott – who plays David, a retired GP who's on holiday with his sick wife Annie (Shirley Henderson) – said the show's examination of xenophobia and social division feels "very pertinent".

"My character is xenophobic, and he talks about 'those people', and I think that's incredibly dangerous," he explained. "I think words matter and I think how you categorise people matters, and that language of distinguishing us from them – 'those kinds of people' – which is basically, if you want to translate that, it comes down to people who are not white and not from this country.

"And the reality of that you can pick apart in five f**king seconds and just say, 'What on earth are you talking about?' There is no 'us'; we're a melting pot. We're a huge mixture of cultures, religions, people from all sorts of walks of life, which then translates into gender and sex and sexuality and all that.

"And I think that voice, that dog whistle of white supremacy, has reared its head again through Reform and Nigel Farage, and I find it utterly disgusting and distasteful – and it's certainly not part of the fabric of me and how I see the world, or what I know the reality of this country to be, or any country to be."

Scott then referenced one of the characters, who talks about wanting to leave the UK "because of what it's become".

"He says, 'I'm gonna go and live somewhere else.' So then you're going to be an immigrant," he continued.

"I find that it's something that we have to address, and I think we all have to think about the issue at hand, which is immigration, refugees, and how we address it and how we deal with it, because the reality is the existential nature of these people's lives has come to pass because of the decisions and the behaviour of the developed countries of the past – like England and the empire mentality, and our involvement in countries throughout the world, which has had a knock-on effect, a domino effect.

"Places like Syria, Africa, India, the Middle East, Afghanistan, right? All these places have been affected by developed countries… and that's not to say that people haven't taken responsibility, but we're certainly part of the problem, and we have to be part of the solution. And we have to do it in a compassionate, pragmatic, fair, humanitarian way, as opposed to 'send them back, let them f**king drown'."

Valene Kane, who plays Justine – a woman on holiday with her husband, from whom she's emotionally checked out, and their two children – went on to say that Summerwater "puts up a mirror to us all".

"So many of these characters say quite distasteful things, which we might all have said at some point in our lives, and hopefully it will just make people think and be more aware of the flippant things that they can say. Words matter."

Read more:

• Summerwater cast: Who stars in the Channel 4 drama?
• From Harry Potter's Moaning Myrtle to Doctor Who - Shirley Henderson reveals secrets behind her iconic roles

Summerwater continues at 9pm tonight (17th November) on Channel 4, with all episodes available to stream on Channel 4.

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