Paul Mescal on his latest film, Irish talent and an incredible list of new projects
Paul Mescal at the recent Academy Awards in Hollywood. (Picture: Frederic J Brown / AFP)
Over the last three years, the course of Paul Mescal’s life has changed in most extraordinary ways. Already a successful young theatre actor, the Maynooth man might have hoped that a lead role in a new TV series might help him make the leap from stage to screen. That series was Normal People, the global sensation that propelled Mescal from promising young actor to international star.
In just three short years, Mescal has seen his career - and the attention that has come with it - soar. And it feels like he’s just getting started - Ridley Scott has just cast him as the lead in his hotly anticipated sequel to Gladiator. Raves have been landing for his performance in A Streetcar Named Desire on London’s West End. Then there was the Oscar nomination for his role in the deeply moving Aftersun, all coming his way just as he reached his 27th birthday last month.
They are among the remarkable successes from one of Ireland’s biggest new acting stars. But how on earth has he been able to navigate the fame and attention that’s come with it?
“Work takes all that pressure away,” says Mescal, whose latest film, God’s Creatures, had its premiere at the recent Dublin International Film Festival. “Being busy, and I know that's probably not sustainable - but it kind of is to a certain extent. Not working is the time it feels the loudest but when you're at work on set or in a rehearsal room, you don't have time. And the absence of time is something that I like!”
Three years after Normal People became a game-changer, Mescal, refreshingly, doesn’t have a simple take on how a young actor could navigate such a turnaround.
“In regards to that, if anybody gives you a definitive answer how they deal with it, I think it's a lie. Sometimes it's overwhelming. But the vast majority of the time I'm around people that I love and that preceded this.”
He excels again in God’s Creatures, a drama-thriller set in contemporary rural Ireland that opens in cinemas on Friday, March 24. He plays Brian, the popular returning emigrant to a quiet fishing community who is embraced by his devoted mother when he comes home.
But when a local young woman (an excellent Aisling Franciosi) subsequently accuses him of rape, Aileen is torn between her loyalty to her son and the impact the accusation is having on their close-knit community.
“There's something accurate about it to me,” he says of the film’s complex story. “It doesn't feel fictitious. It feels like people who are rapists or commit sexual assault, they don't appear innately evil. They, to my mind, are charming, high-functioning members of society and therefore are protected. We all know high profile cases here. Guilty or not guilty, it's the attitude towards women that is the innate problem. And that's scary. It is just so brutalising.”
For all of Brian’s charm and popularity, Mescal feels that there’s a violence to the character that made him challenging to play. One scene with his onscreen father, he recalls, was one of the only moments of his career where he had to walk off the set afterwards to take a moment.
“When those feelings come up it means that you're doing something that is different to you and that's what I think I'm always chasing. But it was a tough one.”
Mescal worked with emerging filmmakers Seala Davis and Anna Rose Holmer on the powerful drama, with the great Emily Watson playing his mother. He would go on to get his first Oscar nomination with first-time feature director Charlotte Wells in Aftersun, the critically lauded tale of a man who spends a memorable holiday with his adolescent daughter.
“I don’t have a big filmography, I’ve made like six or seven films. I’ve started to figure out what works for me,” he says of his path so far. “A first time filmmaker is also normally making the most interesting script to me, because it’s been cooking in their brain for years. It’s not something they’ve inherited. There’s something about that energy that I think is interesting.”
Normal People may have marked Mescal out as an emerging talent but it is the choices he’s made since that have maintained his flourishing career. Among them was the Best Actor Oscar nomination for Aftersun - alongside fellow countryman Farrell, who got the nod for The Banshees of Inisherin. While neither man walked away with the famed statuette on the night, they were part of a historic and record-breaking nine nominations for Irish talent.
Mescal was proud to be a part of it all - but maintains such success can be sustained with effective state support. “It’s talent that is innately here and has always been here,” he says of Ireland’s remarkable year. “We’re getting the opportunities to celebrate our talent as a nation on a global stage. We’ve got directors, we’ve got the writers, we’ve got the actors. We’ve had that for so long.
“I think we went through a period where the talent that we had wasn’t really being fostered outside of two or three people. It’s a task to the Government - it’s like: ‘You've got an A-team of players here. Figure it out.’ Because there actually is no reason why it shouldn't be happening consistently.”
He feels that continuing plans to cultivate emerging talent will yield opportunities into the future. “It's kind of a bit untapped - it's like a goldmine that almost feels like it's been rediscovered. It's really exciting,” he says, adding that the Oscars has been an example of this.
“You've got film stars like Colin and Brendan. Jessie [Buckley] was there last year - you've got these reference points now. I think it would hopefully inspire young actors.”
Mescal will be working with his fellow countrymen in some of his many upcoming projects. He’ll team with Andrew Scott in Andrew Haigh’s Strangers, which will be released later this year. It tells the story of a man who has a chance encounter with a neighbour that alters the rhythm of his everyday life.
Barry Keoghan is reportedly in talks to join the previously cast Mescal on Ridley Scott’s hugely anticipated Gladiator sequel, in which the Maynooth man will play the son of the late Maximus Decimus Meridius. That character was played by Russell Crowe in the original film, which was a massive critical and commercial hit.
Among eight other upcoming projects for the actor is Carmen, a modern-day re-imagining of the classical opera, due for release this autumn. A truly unique project he’s working on is an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s much-loved musical Merrily We Roll Along, set over a twenty-year period. Like he famously did with Boyhood, US director Richard Linklater and his cast will work on a segment of the film every year for the next two decades.
A big fan of Linklater’s work, Mescal is clearly excited at the prospect of being part of something so distinctive. “There's not much I can say about it because I feel like buzz is the thing that kills all films. What I can say is that Richard Linklater is as special as everybody imagines, such a calm man. I don't even know him that particularly well yet - and that's what's so exciting.”
How did he feel about making the long-term time commitment involved? “Easy. Richard Linklater says to jump and you say how high.”
- God’s Creatures opens in cinemas on Friday, March 24
