Celebs Are Bored: Andrew Scott From ‘Fleabag’ Gives Reassuring Poetry Reading

As much of America continues to self-quarantine, the propensity to go stir-crazy increases with each passing day. Celebrities are no different: bored out of their minds while sitting at home indefinitely. Maybe they are ceaselessly launching Instagram Lives just for some human connection. Maybe they’re teasing us with some quarantine writing session. Most likely, they’re sitting in their very large homes, marathoning movies until their eyes glaze over. Relatable! Celebs Are Bored highlights the absurd, inane, and mundane decisions made by people who have an unexpectedly large amount of free time.

Need something comforting to watch in the midst of this global pandemic? How about Andrew Scott, a.k.a. the “Hot Priest” from Fleabag, reading from “Everything Is Going to Be All Right” by Irish poet Derek Mahon? It’s not a hug — or a steamy scene with Phoebe Waller-Bridge — but it will do.

“How should I not be glad to contemplate/the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window/and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?” Scott says calmly.

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The beautiful, breathtaking talent that is Andrew Scott reads for us ‘Everything is Going to be All Right’ by Derek Mahon. Andrew has asked to dedicate this to Men Against Cancer Ireland @menagainstcancer Andrew we salute you! 🕺 It comes under the prescription for need for reassurance. Here’s how it reads as written in the book @thepoetrypharmacy @thepoetryremedy There are moments in life when the banal suddenly, and quite without warning, becomes the transcendent. Perhaps a shaft of afternoon light paints a familiar view an unfamiliar gold; perhaps dust in a sunbeam or the dance of sparks above a fire transport you, for a long instant, to somewhere else altogether. The almost magical-seeming reflections of ripples on a ceiling are transfixing in just the same way. In moments like these- awe-struck moments when the ferocious beauty of the everyday catches us unawares- we are often moved to a reassessment. One flash of sunlight can be all it takes to give us the sense of possibility that can change everything. As a great sufferer from depression myself, I find a small moment like this, a sudden splash of serenity and beauty, can provide the impetus needed to run my mood around. Not completely, perhaps, and not permanently- but sometimes a small push is all any of us is waiting for. Derek Mahon’s poem ‘Everything is Going to be All Right’ describes wonderfully the feeling of that little push and reassessment. And there’s something hugely powerful, too, about its final line. When my children are suffering and I hold them in my arms, it seems to be the most natural mantra in the world: Everything will be all right. There’s a comfort to those words, whether or not they’ll prove to be true. OF course, some wounds don’t heal, and some wrongs go un-righted. But in the grander sense, in the everything sense, things to tend to be all right. Too often, our pain is either in our heads or magnified beyond all proportion. If we can learn to manage it, if we can find that oasis of calm in the reflection of the waves, then we might find that out problems are not as all-consuming as we imagined. Thank you thank you Andrew! 😘

A post shared by @ emilia_clarke on May 18, 2020 at 9:10am PDT

Scott read from the poem for Game of Thrones actor Emilia Clarke, who recently launched a series of celebrity poetry readings on Instagram for charity. Other participants of Clarke’s series have included Stephen Fry, Helena Bonham Carter and Idris Elba. In the description for Scott’s video, Clarke wrote that Scott had chosen to dedicate his reading to Men Against Cancer Ireland.