Sumner is the child of Sting and film producer Trudie Styler. (Getty)
The new Netflix show Ripley stars a number of familiar faces, including Andrew Scott and Dakota Fanning, but it also features the child of a famous person. Sting’s child, to be precise – Eliot Sumner.
Sumner, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, is the child of the legendary frontman of The Police, and film producer Trudie Styler.
Ripley is an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel titled The Talented Mr Ripley, where a young man named Tom Ripley is sent to Italy to persuade Dickie, a rich, trust-fund kid, to return to the family business.
However (spoiler alert), Ripley ends up becoming obsessed with Dickie and kills him in order to assume his identity and take Dickie’s wealth and lifestyle for himself.
Scott plays the titular character in the new Netflix adaptation, which is filmed entirely in black and white. Many people have been asking if Mr Ripley is, in fact, gay: but Scott won’t be drawn on the fraudster’s sexuality.
Eliot Sumner told Tudum that it’s the “thematic combinations of envy, obsession, and fantasy” that bring people, themselves included, returning to the character of Ripley over and over again.
“There’s something innately human about him. 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.”
Who does Eliot Sumner play in Ripley?
Sumner appears in just one episode of Ripley as Freddie Miles, a friend of the object of Ripley’s obsession, Dickie (Johnny Flynn).
According to Tudum, Netflix’s content arm, Miles is considered “a foil to Ripley”.
“Freddie is this posh boarding school guy living abroad who’s unapologetically well off, and most of all he’s everything Tom Ripley hates. I found that very, very fun to play,” Sumner told Tudum.
This is one of Sumner’s first major acting roles, which they said is “a dream come true”, though they have appeared in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen and the James Bond film No Time To Die.
Sumner approached their audition for Miles very uniquely, playing it completely differently to the description of the character, which said that “he was a loud American”. Sumner instead “decided to make him a very observant, arrogant English person and see how that went”.
“I really thought, it’s very nice of them to give me a shot, but I wasn’t going to get it,” Sumner explained.
Is Eliot Sumner on Instagram?
Sumner is on Instagram, posting under the username @eliotsumner.
Many of their recent photos have been black-and-white, emulating the style of Ripley and posing with other cast members from the show.
Is Eliot Sumner in a relationship?
Sumner is not currently thought to be in a relationship. They previously dated society model Frankie Herbert, who is one of the few people to have walked in front of the late Queen Elizabeth, but the couple split last year.
Herbert is the granddaughter of the 7th Earl of Carnarvon and recently shared a photo of her kissing an American woman named Kate Balison in London. She previously came out as pansexual: “Being openly queer has allowed me to be loved to my fullest. Pansexual and proud, baby.”
Ripley is streaming on Netflix now.