Scottish actor Gayle Rankin is answering the pull of home – drawn to folklore-laced stories, Celtic character connections, and now inhabiting the mind of the unorthodox Miss Jean Brodie

Lead image: Gayle Rankin for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Credit: Rankin

By Cheryl Caira

The last time I caught up with the actor and New York theatre star Gayle Rankin, she was readying herself to play the role of Ruth in the 2012 Off-Broadway production of the critically-acclaimed play, Tribes. Fourteen years later, and her career has soared – with credits across film, TV and theatre, her first love.

We’re chatting in February, during a time of record-breaking snow on the US east coast. Rankin is tucked away in Upstate New York, in the house she bought 18 months ago. “It’s like a big old barn, and maybe the only cool thing about me. I love it so much.” Originally from Glasgow’s Southside, Rankin fell in love with the Big Apple on her first visit to the city as a 16-year-old.

Recently, Rankin’s project choices have taken her closer to home. She played one of the leads in independent feature, The Incomer, set on a remote Scottish island (and filmed in Caithness) and tackling topics of isolation, loss and loneliness with tenderness and oddball humour. A debut from the Edinburgh writer-director Louis Paxton, it premiered at this year’s Sundance Festival, and won a NEXT Innovator Award.

“I’m so proud of that film,” Rankin says. “I had such a beautiful time and it made me want to make more stuff at home. I left Scotland when I was 17 to go to drama school in the States, put down roots here, and never really looked back. I have started to work way more in the UK though. It’s interesting how that happens. I think it’s maybe indicative of coming into your own a bit more as a person.

Credit: Rankin

“I love to be alone when I’m not working, because you’re always around so many people. That’s why I bought this house. It’s quite remote and it reminds me a little of home. It’s a bit of a tether, because acting can uproot your life. I’m enjoying building fires, cooking, reading and preparing for projects – and there’s always hustle to find another job.”

Isla, Rankin’s The Incomer character, is obsessed with stories and Scottish folklore. She played a wrestler – Sheila the She-Wolf in hit Netflix series Glow – who has species dysphoria and identifies as the wild animal. Rankin has also recently wrapped on the third series of Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, where she wanted her Celtic heritage to connect to the pagan aspects of her character, healer Alys Rivers. The third season is due to premiere on HBO in June.

“I researched a lot of Celtic witches and women who were misunderstood and done wrong by society, but very powerful at the same time. There’s always this dichotomy. I’ve actually never watched Game of Thrones – I’m sure it’s amazing, but I’m just not a huge fantasy person. I’m very excited about the evolution of the character. It definitely feels like it mirrors an embodied part of my womanhood that I’m stepping into.

“Weirdly, I’ve played so many people who are non-human. I think there’s maybe something subconscious about me, that’s kind of obsessed with ‘other’. I find that I’m able to really disappear into characters. I’m a shapeshifter, I hope. That’s why I got into this – I wasn’t satisfied with just one identity. I want to try them all.

“With Isla, she’s described on the first page of the script as a ‘gale force’ of a woman. She comes off as this very hard, sarcastic, tough cookie. In my own life, I can have some of those extremes – but also paired with vulnerability and childlike curiosity.”

The formidable character of Jean Brodie needs little introduction, and Rankin will make her National Theatre of Scotland debut as Edinburgh’s most memorable literary school teacher. A new adaptation of the Muriel Spark novel by David Harrower, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie will open at the capital’s Royal Lyceum Theatre in October before touring Scotland.  

It’s a circling back for Rankin in a big way: her first professional acting role was playing an unnamed schoolgirl in a 2003 Brodie production at the Lyceum, when the contradictory character was played by Siobhan Redmond. 

“I say this with great respect and misunderstanding on my part, but when I was younger, I felt it was a dusty, kind of boring story. I was completely wrong. Rereading it now, I think I was too young to appreciate what Muriel Spark was doing. I’ve started reading her autobiography and it’s absolutely fascinating. She was prophetic. She had this way of looking at people and seeing how the world was turning that was so ahead of her time. 

The Incomer, set on a remote Scottish island

“It’s made me so much more excited to play Brodie. What is this fascination with this teacher about? Who she kind of dislikes and condemns. I mean she absolutely should be condemned – she’s a fascist, frankly, which is timely to be exploring in this world. It’s really important to hold everybody accountable, but also represent women in a 360-degree fashion. I really love showing the darker side of female characters. That should be on display, because we’re human beings.

“I’m excited to close the show at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. I love the director, Vicky Featherstone, and I think this adaptation is really searing. We’re ready to try and break the play open in a new way. I had this very interesting reaction when Vicky and Alan Cumming [the theatre’s artistic director] offered me the part. I was like, I’m too young. Then I looked up how old Dame Maggie Smith was when she played Brodie in the film, and she was 34. I’m 36!” 

The old and the new collided when Rankin returned to the Kit Kat Club in 2024, starring as the Cabaret lead Sally Bowles alongside British actor Eddie Redmayne. The Broadway revival at the August Wilson Theatre earned her a Tony nomination. A decade earlier, she had made her Broadway debut in the Berlin-set tale – spotlighting a nightclub in Berlin during the Nazi Party’s rise – under Sam Mendes’ direction and playing the supporting role of Fräulein Kost. 

With Eddie Redmayne in Cabaret

‘With material like Cabaret, you don’t ever want to let it go. It’s insurmountable. It’s bigger than all of us. I don’t think you can ever really figure it out. How lucky I was that Sally Bowles came into my life. I didn’t realise how much I wanted to play her until I did. With Eddie, we just went through the fire together. He’s just the best. I love him so much. I’d never been involved in a production of that size, so I think we were holding onto each other like life rafts.”

Rankin was the first Scot to win a highly coveted place at New York arts conservatory Juilliard, where she studied for a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting. “This whole journey has been totally shocking to me. I’m unabashedly ambitious, but it can also take me away from really sitting down and acknowledging what has come before. I feel extraordinarily grateful. I can’t quite absorb how lucky I’ve been.

“I do feel like I’m in the prime of my creativity. I want to explore roles where women are in that period of their life, because I don’t know if we really do that enough. Society is pretty scared of women in their power. I’d also like to crack the code on my version of a love story. I don’t know what that is yet. I want to keep playing extreme, scary, challenging characters. But I’m also drawn to material that’s intimate, nuanced and beautiful.”