Fleabag's Andrew Scott and Normal People's Paul Mescal star in a profoundly moving new ghost story

Adam (Andrew Scott) lives in a bleak high-rise flat in London. Since his parents died in a car crash when he was 11, he’s found it difficult to make human connections: he’s friendless and, although clearly attracted to his handsome neighbour Harry (Paul Mescal), he nevertheless rebuffs the other man’s advances.

One day he takes a train to a leafy suburb. As night falls a man motions to him to follow, leading him to a welcoming family home where the door is opened by a woman with a radiant smile. ‘Well don’t just stand there,’ she says. ‘Get yourself inside!’

So begins All Of Us Strangers, a tender new film about a man who visits the ghosts of his parents who are still living in his childhood home. He talks to them, adult to adult, about his life, his work and – not least – his sexuality. 

By literally facing the ghosts of his past, he opens himself up to both the joys and the risks of falling in love.

For writer-director Andrew Haigh, who based the film on the Japanese novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, the story was one he’d been mulling for some time. 

‘I was sent the book four or five years ago,’ he says. ‘I read it and put it away but I couldn’t get this idea out of my head of meeting your parents again long after they’re no longer in your life.

‘But where the novel was a very traditional Japanese ghost story, I wanted to turn it into something that made sense for me.’

That meant shifting not only the location, but also the main character’s sexual orientation. ‘I’m gay myself, so that made sense for me to do,’ he says. 

‘But that’s just the starting point. I’ve wanted for a long time to tell a story about family and its relationship to gayness, and how for a queer kid it can feel very different growing up within a heterosexual family. 

'The story is about understanding the nature of love, how romantic love is associated with familial love, and how intertwined they are.’

Andrew Scott, who played the Hot Priest in Fleabag, says it was the dream-like quality of the script that attracted him. 

‘I think there’s a real potency to the emotions we feel in dreams. Sometimes you wake up grief-stricken or angry, or with all sorts of things on your mind. The way our consciousness is formed is incredibly surreal. I think ghosts are everywhere.’

They might well be. But for Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, who play Adam’s ghostly parents, the logistics of portraying a post-mortal existence were puzzling. 

‘So we’re dead, but we’ve come back to life and our son is in his 40s,’ says Claire. ‘We’re living in the family house and Jamie and I are, like, “Do we eat? Do we not eat? What do we do when he goes away?” 

'In the end we just had to dive in without too much heavy thinking. We just had to play Adam’s parents.’

At 47, Andrew Scott is ten and eight years older than Jamie and Claire respectively, but that wasn’t a problem. 

‘It took about three-and-a-half hours and we were treating him like he was our kid,’ laughs Claire. ‘I knew Andrew very well before this so it was very easy for me. It couldn’t be weirder, but at the same time it felt so natural.’

Both Claire and Jamie are parents in real life. Claire has a daughter from her former marriage to actor Stephen Campbell Moore, while Jamie has a son from his first marriage to Evan Rachel Wood and a daughter and another son from his current marriage to Kate Mara.

‘My entry point to the script,’ laughs Jamie, ‘was what a horrifying concept it would be if my children were my age and we were discussing what kind of a parent I was and what complexes I gave them. 

'But the film made me think what an unbelievable privilege it is to be a parent. These small things really do think you’re the bee’s knees. I want to hold on to that feeling and hope I can be worthy of it.’

Claire adds, ‘What I’ve learned as a parent is I never want to leave anything unsaid. This film shows life is too short not to say what you want. The worst that could happen is you could lose someone and not have said what you meant to. I’m not prepared to take that risk.’