Paul attended the annual Oscars Nominees Luncheon last night! He’s a first-time nominee, which is for the prestigious Actor in a Leading Role category for his performance in Aftersun. The awards ceremony will be held on March 12th. Visit our gallery for photos of Paul at the luncheon!

Public Appearances > 2023 > February 13: 95th Annual Oscars Nominees Luncheon – Arrivals
Public Appearances > 2023 > February 13: 95th Annual Oscars Nominees Luncheon – Inside
Photo Sessions > 2023 > 003: Oscars Nominees Luncheon

Paul sat down with Los Angeles Times and talked about his Oscar nomination and his career. It’s only a few photos, but Paul looks great in this photoshoot. If you’re not able to read the full article on Times’ website, I have added the article on this site as part of our upcoming press archive!

“Madness.” That’s how Paul Mescal dubs his unexpected lead actor Oscar nomination for playing Calum, the unfathomable young father at the heart of writer-director Charlotte Wells’ beautifully haunting “Aftersun.”

“A lot of the nominees know they’re gonna be nominated on the day,” says the Irishman — born in the small town of Maynooth, County Kildare,15 miles west of Dublin — over Zoom from London three days before his 27th birthday in early February, and barely an hour after stepping offstage at the Almeida Theatre, where he’s earned glowing notices portraying Stanley Kowalski in Rebecca Frecknall’s sold-out revival of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “But we had no idea… It was genuinely thrilling.”

“Madness” and “genuinely thrilling” define Mescal’s impressive ascent since catapulting onto the scene in Hulu’s 2020 limited series “Normal People,” playing sensitive jock Connell, a performance that netted him an Emmy nomination and a BAFTA TV Award win.

Since then, he’s appeared in the films “The Lost Daughter,” “God’s Creatures” and “Carmen” with cast mates including Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Emily Watson and Rossy de Palma. He’ll soon co-star in a slate of fresh movies alongside the likes of Beanie Feldstein, Ben Platt, Andrew Scott, Saoirse Ronan, Claire Foy and Josh O’Connor.

So charged has been Mescal’s schedule over the last three years that he’s had only a couple months off here and there, which is just how the man likes it.

“Enough for a break, but not enough to get itchy again,” he says, revealing his insatiable appetite for work, and his opinion that actors are “phenomenal people.” While he’ll forever be grateful to Wells — whom he “loves deeply” — for helping him earn his first Oscar nomination in her first feature, what is particularly gratifying is that the honor was bestowed upon him by the academy’s acting branch. “For that to come from my peers is one of the coolest things ever,” he continues. “The thing I feel most is a great sense of pride in the work I’ve made to date, and pride in the people I have worked for… I work hard for just the opportunities to make films, and I work hard on the films that I get.”

Interestingly, Mescal’s not sure he was “a fan” of theater growing up. While he was exposed to music, the arts and culture in a home headed by a semi-pro actor father, his first love was Gaelic football, at which he excelled as a teen. Had it not been for Maynooth Post Primary School’s proviso compelling all fourth-year students to try out for its annual high school musical, the world may never have discovered Mescal’s dramatic gifts.

“I definitely wanted to be in it,” he stresses. “I didn’t go into the audition reluctantly. But I think, had it been an optional thing, it probably would’ve passed me by because I don’t know if I would’ve had the confidence, at 16, to turn to my friends and be like, by the way, I’m gonna audition for ‘Phantom of the Opera.’”

But he did audition — and won the title role. He “immediately” fell in love with being onstage and went on to earn a degree in acting from the Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin at 21. “I had the most profoundly wonderful time in drama school. I loved every second of it. It was difficult… I needed the time to figure out what I liked about acting, what I felt I was good at, what I felt I was bad at.”

Los Angeles Times

Paul is featured in today’s issue of The Hollywood Reporter and with a very fitting title of Everybody Hearts Paul Mescal! We have also been blessed with a pretty new photoshoot. You can read an excerpt of the feature below, and photos in our gallery! I’ll add scans when I get them!

On the day he turned 16, Paul Mescal was on a stage, being presented with a cake by the cast and crew of his high school production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. “That’s the first thing I ever did, so I actually take great pride in it,” says Mescal of his public acting debut, playing the Phantom. (The entire production has been uploaded by the school to YouTube. Mescal is a gifted high baritone.) “That was the moment when I was like, ‘Oh fuck — this adrenaline is incredible,’ ” he says. “I’ve never felt a high like that.”

Imagine the high, then, that Mescal is feeling today, his 27th birthday. He’ll spend it on a stage once more, as the marquee draw of the hottest theater ticket in London, possibly even the English-speaking world. It’s a radical reworking of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire starring Mescal as Stanley Kowalski, the part that famously launched Marlon Brando, first on Broadway then in film. The reviews have been stellar, with THR praising his menacing Stanley as a “ticking time bomb” whose “destruction of Blanche” — Dubois, the play’s faded debutante, played by Spanish-British actress Patsy Ferran — “is deliberate, cruel and shocking.”

Adding to the adrenaline is the fact that this birthday comes nine days after Mescal learned he’d been nominated for an Oscar for his work in A24’s Aftersun, a festival darling from first-time director Charlotte Wells of Scotland. With that, Mescal gains entry into one of Hollywood’s most exclusive and illustrious clubs: 26-year-old best actor nominees. It consists of Orson Welles for Citizen Kane, James Dean for Giant, Heath Ledger for Brokeback Mountain and Ryan Gosling for Half-Nelson. If he wins — and it’s anyone’s race with five first-time nominees, including his fellow Irishman Colin Farrell — he will be the youngest best actor winner ever, beating Adrien Brody by three years.

It’s a bit much to take in for a guy who just three years ago was an anonymous young theater actor in Dublin. “It’s a world that I may be starting to understand slightly,” he says of his success. “And I love work. If I could work every day, every hour, I would. I get itchy when I’m not working. I know at some point I’ll get tired and probably burn out for a little bit, but I don’t feel that now.”

For our rendezvous, Mescal suggests a health food spot — though he’ll only drink a coffee, then later politely ask to smoke a cigarette — a few blocks from the Almeida Theatre, a 325-seat venue in North London where Streetcar has been playing to packed houses since Dec. 20. Mescal saunters up having come directly from the gym, wearing a long overcoat (a label on the cuff reads Gucci) over a navy fleece and worn denim jeans. A cap bearing the name of his health club is tucked over his famous gray blue eyes.

The Saturday prior, Nicole Kidman was in attendance at Streetcar and led that evening’s standing ovation. (“She came to the [men’s] dressing room. We were in our pants,” says Mescal, referring to underwear.) The Almeida has been an incubator for many successful West End transfers. Sure enough, this Streetcar, directed by Rebecca Frecknall — who won an Olivier Award directing Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley in a 2021 Cabaret revival — will relocate to London’s Phoenix Theatre in March. Every ticket for the six-week West End run sold out in a single day.

I ask him about the Oscar nomination, his emotional reaction to which was documented in a family Zoom, shared on social media by his younger sister Nell. His mother, recently diagnosed with cancer, had gotten her hair cut short that day in preparation for chemotherapy. The family is in tears. Shocked faces. Joyful disbelief.

Did it come as a total surprise to him? “It’s very hard to avoid the forecasting,” Mescal says. “So I was kind of aware that I was maybe on the bubble — like on the outside of potentially getting a nomination. I was aware that films like Aftersun aren’t the go-to Oscar pick a lot of the time. So it was a big surprise. The surprise was real. Yeah.”

The Hollywood Reporter

It’s raining new photoshoots! Paul has done a new one for ES Magazine. In this interview, Paul talks about his new-found fame and also answered some questions in Everything London Wants to Know. Check it out the video below, along with an excerpt of the article, and photos in our gallery! Scans will definitely be added soon.

A woman recently stopped Paul Mescal to ask whether she could have her photo taken with him. They were outside the Almeida Theatre in Islington where Mescal was starring in a sellout run of the Tennessee Williams classic, A Streetcar Named Desire. ‘As we posed for it, she put her hand on my ass,’ he says with a frown. ‘I thought it was an accident, so I like…’ he gets up from his chair and shimmies awkwardly away from an imaginary hand, ‘but the hand followed. I remember tensing up and feeling just, like, fury.’ So what did he do? ‘I turned to her and said, “What’re you doing? Take your hand off my ass.”’

We are in a dressing room in a north London photography studio. Next door, a team is preparing the set for our shoot. ‘The last thing I want to do,’ he says, skewering me with a very blue-eyed gaze as he sits back down, ‘is call somebody out in front of the theatre — it’s uncomfortable for everyone involved — but it was really not okay. It was so gross, creepy.’ This has been Mescal’s experience of fame so far, he tells me: ‘97 per cent of it is really nice — then 3 per cent is somebody, like, grabbing your ass.’

There is a palpable energy around the 27-year-old Irish actor. Not just because of Streetcar (a resounding triumph, garnering a slew of five-star reviews and a transfer to the West End in March) but also, of course, because of the Oscar. Mescal has been nominated in the Best Actor category for his portrayal of young father Calum in Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun. ‘It’s crazy, right?’ He seems sweetly awe-struck when I bring it up. Today he arrived wearing a fleece top and jeans, very low key. He doesn’t look like an LA movie star but there is something compelling about him, he has presence. ‘Look, I’m not going to win,’ he is saying — his voice is low and gravelly, he’s got that inviting Irish brogue. ‘So it’s kind of low-stakes pressure, I can basically just sit back and enjoy it.’ It hits him every so often, he says, ‘like if I’ve a film coming out, now it will say, “Oscar-nominee Paul Mescal,” and I’m like, “Whoa that’s mad.” It’s just cool, I’m going to be at the thing I remember watching when I was growing up. And when they call out the best actors there’s going to be a camera on me and my mum, waiting to clap for — hopefully — Colin Farrell.’ He says he’ll have a speech prepared just in case. ‘But only because I didn’t have one for the Baftas [he won Leading Actor for Normal People in 2021]. I was convinced I wouldn’t win and then had a full brain .’ He mimes his head exploding. ‘I saw Michaela Coel backstage straight after and she was like, “Well done, well done — you should have prepared a speech,”’ he laughs. ‘So I’m going to write one and then have it framed when I never have to use it.’

Mescal has a cold today; he’s drinking Lemsip and says that he’s on some kind of post-Streetcar comedown. It’s unsurprising. I saw the play on the last day of its six-week run at the Almeida; his role, as the story’s brutish lodestar, Stanley Kowalski (a part made famous in 1951 by a young Marlon Brando) is incredibly physical. The thing about watching famous people on stage is that it can be hard to forget who they are. In Streetcar, though, Mescal sheds the mild-mannered, smiley self he is today and becomes men acing, a bestial and imposing abuser. A frightening presence. ‘I had to have a steroid shot to go on that day,’ he says. ‘I barely got through it. I think my body knew it was coming to the end of the run.’

There’s a sense of barely repressed violence in his portrayal of Kowalski. In God’s Creatures, too — a film coming to cinemas in March, co-starring Emily Watson — he plays Brian, a young man accused of rape. He is charming and vulnerable but also a little frightening. ‘The minute Emily was on board I was over the moon. I’ve admired her work for so long; the thing I noticed was how easy it was for her to lead us as a cast. I loved every second.’ That glimmer of violence is also present in his portrayal of Calum in Aftersun. Where does that hint of menace come from? ‘Somewhere deep within…’ he starts, before laughing. ‘No, I’m joking, I don’t know. I mean, it has to come from someplace and it probably does come from within myself.’

ES Magazine

Paul is featured in this month’s issue of The Wrap magazine! Check out some outtakes and scans in our gallery!

Photo Sessions > 2023 > 011: TheWrap
Magazine Scans > 2023 > TheWrap – March 2023

One of the exciting things about your nomination is that “Aftersun” is kind of an anti-Oscary movie. It doesn’t have big emotional showdowns and such. Even in your big scene, we don’t see your face.
I would love to take some credit for that but I think that’s innately what Charlotte wanted from the film and in the screenplay that Charlotte wrote. I don’t think that the film was manipulative or pushy in terms of asking an audience to feel things. I think as a result, mine and Frankie’s job was to come in and understand the task at hand. And that was to just step into a quiet film. The running joke with me and my friends on my team is, like, I have no idea what clip they’re going to use for this. [Laughs.]

I do take great pride in the fact that I don’t think it’s a classically Oscar-y performance, but also, it’s a testament, I think, to the actors branch of the Academy who went out and voted for it anyway. Had I not been in it, it’s the kind of film that I would want to see as an actor.

What’s it like to be in this category of nominees? It’s wonderfully age diverse category, and it’s people doing very internal work. Have you gotten to know the guys ?
I have. The pre-nomination campaign, I was doing the play so I didn’t bump into people, but at the nominees lunch, I bumped into Bill [Nighy] a couple of times, met Brendan [Fraser] and Colin [Farrell] properly, and bumped into Austin [Butler]. So I’m hoping that over the next few weeks, we’ll be seeing much more of each other. But yeah, in terms of the standard of the work, to be in and amongst them — it’s just a massive honor that isn’t lost on me at all. 

You’ve had an incredible year with great projects like “Aftersun,” “God’s Creatures” and an Olivier-nominated turn in “A Streetcar Named Desire” in the West End. There are many more projects coming up. You’ve become a very unclassifiable actor in the most wonderful way. Is that something you’re conscious of?
I don’t think I’m a particularly patient person, right? It can feel rapid and all-encompassing, but I think at the moment I would struggle with, say, doing a recurring series or something — and not for any reason other than my own disposition, which is just that I like changing it up. Things that feel innately different are more interesting to me. But it’s not a roadmap of, like, “We’ve done something small and intimate. So now we need big studio moments.” The choices I’m making are related to predominantly the screenplays that I’m reading.

Speaking of changing it up, we have to ask about the progress of Richard Linklater’s “Merrily We Roll Along,” which will be shot over 20 years as the characters age. What’s it like to work on something nobody will see for a long time?
We’ve shot the first segment, and we’ll shoot the second segment this year at some point. I imagine that there will be a curiosity at the halfway point to be, like, ‘How does it all look?’ It’s such an interesting process, because we know that we’re going to be filming for 20 years. I imagine it will be very humbling.

Do you imagine going back to the stage now, during the height of all of this attention, as a palate cleanser?
I think it makes me a better actor. I love the structure of my day when I’m working on stage. I mean, there’s nothing really palate cleanser-like about Stanley Kowalski. It’s one of the most exhausting characters that I’ve played. I feel like the palate cleanser will be whatever the fuck I do after. [Laughs.] Just like I don’t feel like [Ridley Scott’s sequel to] “Gladiator” is going to be a palate cleanser. But it’s the only way I know how to work. I think this gap was the longest that I was ever off stage. And it felt like too long for me.

What was it like to do the play amid all the attention you received for “Aftersun”? Because I have worked on stage productions and I know what that eight-show-a-week schedule is like. It’s hard to absorb other things within that. Was that challenging?
I didn’t really have to absorb much because had there been a real expectation that we were going to be firmly in the mix for a nomination, it would have made the play probably more difficult, or it would have been a more difficult conversation because there was no world in which I was ever not going to do the play.

There was never a firm expectation that this [nomination] was ever going to happen for my performance. It wasn’t particularly forecasted. I think it was, like, champions in the media and in the news, who were like, “We really enjoyed the performance.” And that was enough. I think we were wonderfully outside of the bubble and just let it be what it was going to be, and it ended up being this. I’m blown away by the fact that has happened. 

Any chance you might bring your Stanley Kowalski to the Broadway stage?
I imagine there would be conversations happening somewhere, but to be honest, I don’t know. We’re just focusing on getting it up in London. I mean, if I do a play on Broadway, I can call it quits and be a happy actor.

TheWrap

Paul attended this year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards held yesterday in Santa Monica. He looked so good in that turquoise jacket and perfectly fit for the portraits! He was nominated for Best Lead Performance for his performance in Aftersun, and the award went to Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Director Charlotte Wells took home the Best First Feature, so still congratulations to the entire cast and crew! Visit our gallery for photos of Paul at the event, including some gorgeous portraits!

Public Appearances > 2023 > March 04: 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards – Arrivals
Public Appearances > 2023 > March 04: 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards – Show
Public Appearances > 2023 > March 04: 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards – Press Room
Photo Sessions > 2023 > 012: 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards

Paul is featured in next month’s issue of Harper’s Bazaar magazine! Check out some outtakes and scans in our gallery. I’ll have the full interview on a separate page for the press section I’m still currently building, check back soon for that!

Photo Sessions > 2023 > 014: Harper’s Bazaar
Magazine Scans > 2023 > Harper’s Bazaar – September 2023

Paul is also on the cover of the latest issue of Esquire magazine! Check out a special interview below, and scans and outtakes in our gallery.

Photo Sessions > 2023 > 015: Esquire UK
Magazine Scans > 2023 > Esquire UK – Autumn 2023

Paul was in the new season of Variety’s Actors on Actors, as part of promotion for All of Us Strangers! This time, he was paired with Natalie Portman, who’s promoting May December. Check out their full conversation below, and some photos from their shoot in our gallery!

Photo Sessions > 2023 > 017: Variety – Actors on Actors

Paul and Andrew recently spoke with The New York Times to discuss their movie All of Us Strangers. Check out a snippet of their interview below, and some photos from their shoot in our gallery! If you’re not able to access the full interview due to paywall, you can read it in full here.

Photo Sessions > 2023 > 018: The New York Times
Magazine Scans > 2023 > The New York Times – December 07, 2023

Andrew, you were attached to this movie first. How did you feel when Paul was cast?

SCOTT I was really thrilled because I was hoping that people would be able to see how cinematic and brilliant that role is.

MESCAL It never occurred to me that people wouldn’t be interested in it.

SCOTT Well, the character is such a vessel for love. To be able to play love, it’s something that you have to just know how to embody, and Paul is so excellent about being able to allow the audience in. When I heard he was interested, I was saying to Andrew, “Make that happen!”

MESCAL Even if I didn’t like the script or Andrew Haigh as much as I do, and I knew Andrew [Scott] was going to be doing the film, I still would have done the film.

SCOTT Would you?

MESCAL A hundred percent. And I know that probably sounds sycophantic, but when I was reading it and imagining you’d do it, I thought, “This is built for an actor of your caliber.” There’s lots of brilliant dramatic actors in the world, but what I think separates Andrew is his capacity to understand the dramatic requirements of a scene but also to play utterly against it. He finds humor in subject matter like this, which is really quite heavy, and if you can make an audience laugh, you’re halfway to making them cry.

This is a very tactile movie, too.

SCOTT There’s so much touching, whether that’s familial touching or a more sensual thing. People have talked an awful lot about the chemistry and the sex between our characters, but actually what I think is really radical and affecting about the relationship is how affectionate and tender they are with each other. It’s such a beautiful thing to play, isn’t it? Just real care.

MESCAL I find it healing to watch that kind of emotional intimacy. I remember being surprised when we watched it for the first time, because I didn’t remember being so close to your face when we were talking, how we were totally taking each other in. There’s a weird thing that I don’t think you can cheat: You know how when somebody you love is talking to you, and you look at their lips? It’s like, Jesus, I can’t remember doing that.

Andrew, you’ve said before that acting is a matter of revealing. What’s being revealed about you by taking on this role?

SCOTT I think an awful lot, if I’m honest. I’m happy to be able to say that to be emancipated from shame has been genuinely the biggest achievement of my life. For a long time, I have felt very comfortable with myself, but it doesn’t take much to go back there — something a taxi driver can say can still wound you. If he might say, “You’ve got a wife?” You could go, “No, I don’t,” or is that sort of a lie by omission? I think the challenge was to undo the work and go to that place where you feel frightened.

How were you able to emancipate yourself from shame?

SCOTT I genuinely think that acting helped me. When I was a kid, I started doing elocution lessons because I had a really bad lisp. “She sells seashells,” I had to say that 17 times a day. So they sent me to elocution, which was boring, but eventually it was speech and drama classes. I was so shy and terrified, but then someone would say, “Get up and do an improvisation,” and some part of me felt …

MESCAL … free?

SCOTT Free, and I loved it. And then I practiced it a little bit more and then started doing it as a job. When I was 18 or 19, I was playing gay parts but I wasn’t out. A lot of people within the industry were queer, so I was surrounded by them and then, bit by bit, started to feel confident. To make something like [“All of Us Strangers”], it moves me, because I never thought that I’d get a chance to expose myself so much in a film like this or for it to be in such a trusting environment with such brilliant colleagues.

And do you rush headlong into the chance to expose yourself like that?

SCOTT I do. It’s my responsibility. The further I go into acting, I think that’s all it is, actually.

The New York Times

Paul and Andrew also did an interview for Los Angeles Times as part of All of Us Strangers promotion! It’s also another pretty shoot. Check out a snippet of the interview below, and some photos in our gallery. If you’re also not able to access the full article on their website, you can read it here.

Photo Sessions > 2023 > 019: Los Angeles Times

I heard your first scene together was rushed because of technical issues. For a movie as delicate as this one, that sounds nerve-racking.

Andrew Scott: I actually think the clock ticking can be conducive to creativity. Sometimes a lethargy comes on bigger budget stuff, because your imagination is constantly being interrupted. What happens is you have a little bit of momentum, then you’re waiting around for a bit and the momentum is stopped. So a bit of a — pardon the expression — kick-bollocks scramble can be really wonderful. And that scene, which involves all the characters, is one of the most extraordinary scenes in the film, because it’s all in one take.

A hallmark of Haigh’s films is small physical gestures that feel improvised. Discuss.

Paul Mescal: Like, when I’m brushing my teeth and you come from behind [and hug me]. That was directed. You totally forget that one-eighth of a page in the script. But Andrew puts them in at critical junctures just when you need the film to be healing.

Scott: Lots of the improvisation was physical. The sex in the film was very important. The idea that sometimes one person is nervous at some point or just the way you express yourself physically. Mercifully, we were very comfortable with each other from the beginning. We knew the camera was roaming, so it wasn’t as technical. We [had an] intimacy coordinator and [stayed] within the bounds of what we’d agreed to. But within that we were very free.

Did you share your director’s initial concern that audiences might find “Strangers” absurd?

Scott: I think all great works of art have some sort of flourish or audacity about them. Any film that we love has a concept that afterwards you think, “Oh, God, that could have been kind of ridiculous.” “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “2001” or “Dr. Strangelove.” Films we love have a singularity about them. And singularity is always going to be absurd in some way — until it isn’t.

Paul, talk about being the last one cast.

Mescal: I read the script, and without getting into a conversation about sexuality, Harry was somebody I understood innately. I don’t have the same shared life experience. I’m not estranged from my family, etc. But I know who that man is and that the people populating the film were going to tell the story correctly. I desperately wanted to be involved.So I pursued the role to a certain extent. But all you can do as an actor is express interest, put yourself on the line and go, “I hope this director likes me.” I remember being incredibly nervous before the Zoom with Andrew. It’d have devastated me to see somebody else play it. I don’t think I could watch it.

How much rehearsal was devoted to building chemistry?

Scott: We didn’t do anything, really.

Mescal: I feel like you can’t work towards something like that. Imagine you’re on a date and there’s no chemistry. It doesn’t matter how many dates you go on. It doesn’t make you feel any closer to that person. [To Andrew] You’ve said this before, but there’s actors who hate each other who have the most amazing chemistry. So it has nothing to do with whether you like somebody or not. But I think it helps when you do.It’s a trust thing.

Los Angeles Times

Paul and Andrew did a conversation with Saoirse Ronan for Flaunt magazine wherein they discussed All of Us Strangers, their roles, and more. It’s such a fun conversation! Check out a snippet below, and read it in full here in our press section. Also head over to our gallery for some outtakes and some screencaps from the making-of film!

Saoirse: Andrew, um, Paul was making fun of me because I have a ring light.

‍Andrew: I was gonna say, you look radiant.

‍Paul [laughing]: Fucking desperate is what that is.

‍Saoirse: I have a ring light because my basement is too dark and I wanted to look good for you. I don’t care about Paul, but I wanted to look good for you.

‍Andrew: What a humble brag. “My lower ground level is just a bit too dark.”[Several minutes of lighthearted ribbing later…]

‍Saoirse: Anyway. Let’s talk about your gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous film. You’re two unbelievably talented, brilliant, beautiful men that I love very much and I’m very, very proud of. One of which I know incredibly well. One of which—Andrew—I don’t know as well, but you are truly one of the best actors in the world, and that’s not mincing words at all.

Andrew: Not yet, Saoirse. Not yet.

‍Saoirse: You are! We watched [the film] last night with Paul’s, um… very small collection of friends.

‍Paul: I did a friends and family screening, Andrew, and I wanted to cancel it because—and this isn’t like a ‘woe is me’—but I don’t have lots of friends. And none of my family showed up to it. So honestly, I had about five actual friends there. There were more people there that I’d never met before.

‍Andrew: Yeah, but your siblings had seen it already!

‍Paul: But still… Like fucking show up is what I think that to that.

‍Andrew: Who was there?

‍Saoirse: Publicists…

Saoirse: Andrew, how did you access things about your own experience [in the role]? Was it painful? Do you feel changed in any way? Do you feel like you’re being kinder to yourself? Do you feel the same? How do you feel after the whole experience?

‍Andrew: It’s unlike anything else, isn’t it? When you see something in a script and you think, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to get to express something that’s never been expressed before.’ So even if it’s very vulnerable I’ve never really found it painful to be in pain on screen. I think pain expressed is pain released. It’s a really beautiful thing about our job, particularly in something that’s so personal to me in this story.

But weirdly, when we went to see a screening for the first time after the strike, I did feel very exposed. I think, Paul, you thought this too, in relation to Harry, because obviously we’re physically very exposed in the film—but there were scenes that I didn’t realize were so immersive, and being there in front of 350 people who are watching moments in the film where I really don’t feel like I was acting. It feels like it was just me, and for that to not only be seen by an audience, but for it to be understood, and for other people to connect with it feels completely magical. When I was younger, I thought that part of me would never be seen, and if it was, it would be rejected.

Saoirse: And Paul, what about for you?‍

Paul: I think I differ slightly from Andrew in that approach… When I’m thinking about starting to play Harry, I’ll normally spend like a day and go, “Where are we similarly aligned?” Then that starts to get a bit painful, and I’ll say, “Okay, I’m not going to think about that.” I’m going to focus on an accent or something that’s different, or I start thinking about the aesthetic, how I want him to be kind of shaggy and have a mustache. They’re just kind of loose ideas. I was surprised on set because, and I know we’re amongst friends here… and I know it’s going to be in a magazine, but there was a moment that I was surprised at how unavailable I was to myself.

There was a day on set when we were shooting the scene with Andrew where he’s talking about his mother’s death, and my mom had just gotten sick, and I was so oblivious to the fact that it could have been triggering. We were setting up for the scene, and I remember the cameras getting set up, and I was like, “Oh fuck this! I’m going to have a panic attack.” I wasn’t even aware at the time that, of course, it was associated with the death of a parent. Thankfully my mom is doing quite well now, but at that time it was all in flux. I ended up having a panic attack and ran off-set. So that kind of tunes into the fact—and I don’t know if it’s damaging because I feel like it works for me when I’m acting—I focus on the differences because I feel like the similarities simply exist.

Flaunt

Photo Sessions > 2023 > 020: Flaunt
Photo Sessions > 2023 > 021: Flaunt – Film

“Are you not entertained?” Paul graces the cover of the latest issue of GQ Magazine! Photographed by Dan Jackson, this photoshoot definitely emanates with a Gladiator II vibe in time for the much-awaited sequel. Check out outtakes in our gallery! Below is an excerpt from the interview, but you can read it in full in our press archive, including two video interviews that Paul did for the feature!

Photo Sessions > 2024 > 004: GQ

Mescal, 28, has, in just four short years, established himself as one of the finest actors of his generation. In my estimation, he’s the most naturalistic. He possesses a very rare and specific brand of masculinity, both solid—thanks, in part, to years playing Gaelic football—and vulnerable. He cries beautifully.

By which I mean something of the opposite: big, ugly, unselfconscious tears. His roles, including his out-of-thin-air breakout as bookish jock Connell in Normal People; a lonely gay party boy in the fantasy drama All of Us Strangers; and an astounding turn as a depressed young father in Aftersun, for which he earned an Oscar nomination last year at the tender age of 26, often feature brooding, weeping, or a combination of both. When I ask him to describe a through line between the characters he’s played, he says, “People who want to be something so much but don’t have the instrument to play that kind of music.”

In internet parlance, those characters have been summed up as “sad and sexy.” Under our tree, we have a laugh at this, but he also wonders: Who the hell watches a movie like Aftersun, where his character Calum is so wounded and adrift and struggling with a mountain of pain, and thinks, Sexy!

“Watch lists for those people,” he jokes. “Big-time watch lists.”

To be fair: Twice, he’s read a script where a character’s face has been described as “sad” and, twice, he’s gotten that role. It can be jarring to realize that Mescal is technically younger than fellow 28-year-old Timothée Chalamet because he tends to play, and even carry himself, older; in Aftersun he was wholly believable as the father to an 11-year-old daughter. What is it? “Genetics? A bad skin routine?” he theorizes. He is handsome in the way your most handsome friend is handsome, and this, in turn, is part of what makes him such a believable actor and object of desire. If our century is defined by artifice and disconnect, Mescal grounds us back to the human.

Daisy Edgar-Jones, his co-lead on Normal People and one of Mescal’s best friends, told me that “Paul’s always been really okay in his skin in a really wonderful way.”

Andrew Haigh, who directed Mescal in the heartbreaker that was All of Us Strangers, also alluded to this innate comfort. “He’s always exploring and trying to dig deeper and find the truth of every single scene that he does. But he does it with a real ease,” Haigh said. “Some actors can be so tortured, and he’s not tortured. He does it with a sort of curiosity rather than any kind of painful investigation.”

I have interviewed enough young actors at this point that it’s almost easier to describe Mescal by saying what he is not. He is not tormented by fame or visibly aggravated by its responsibilities. He is not trying to prove how smart he is; not on some kind of oily charm offensive. He possesses neither arrogance nor false humility. In short: a cool guy, a good hang.

The last time I talked to Mescal was in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and after Normal People—with its genuine, unvarnished depictions of emotion and sex and emotional sex—had, quite literally overnight, made him a household name. Our conversation was, out of necessity, entirely over Zoom, and he was deep into a multi-month press cycle during which he had to answer some version of “What was it like working with an intimacy coordinator?” hundreds of times over. He was 24 then and seemed to be chafing under his new visibility.

Since then, he’s traveled through his 20s, one of the most acutely felt periods of change in life, with all the attendant growth and loss, but at a magnified scale. “I look back at myself at 24, he’s a different guy,” Mescal says. “Everything was still so ideal in my head. I was so deeply uncynical at that age. I don’t mean happier in the broad sense, but it was kind of the montage sequence of, everything’s rosy in the garden. But also the other side of it has always been available to me. I understand the psychological landscape of the characters that I play and that isn’t just from reading the script, it’s from inside you somewhere.”

He has worked steadily and meticulously since Normal People. If there is a method, it has been to follow his taste. “I weirdly enjoy the intensity of the way my brain works,” he says. “That’s why I think I function better when I’m at work than when I’m between jobs.” (While we’re on the topic of work ethic, he brings up something else: “Maybe my toxic trait is, I don’t believe in work-at-home Friday.” I gently point out that Paul Mescal, movie star, is not exactly a job you can do from home on Fridays anyway.)

“My agent refers to me openly as a psychopath when it comes to work,” he says, alternating between intermittently tugging at blades of Victoria Park grass and tugging at his hair. “I feel an intense desire to have this forever”—the opportunity, the success, the artistic freedom—“I want this to never stop. So with that comes a kind of neurosis of control.”

I suggest that he at least seems more relaxed than when I talked to him a few years back. Mescal laughs with palpable delight.

“Do you think I’m relaxed?” he asks me, perking up. “That’s great. Thank God. GQ has endorsed me as chill and unaffected. Fuck it, let’s end it here.”

But we can’t, not as he’s about to embark on new territory altogether, exposing a much larger audience to his work than ever before: a blockbuster, his first ever, playing the lead role in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II.

Already, something peculiar is happening when Mescal is stopped by strangers on the street. “The bros will come up and be like, ‘Can’t wait for Gladiator.’ No proper handshakes, lots of this handshake,” he says, pantomiming the handshake hug beloved by dudes the world over. “I’m an honorary bro now.”

GQ