Paul Mescal Breaks Down Gladiator II, Normal People & More

It's a pretty fun way to audition. If all auditions were smoking and dancing around my hotel room, I'd be a much happier actor. Hello GQ, this is The Beginner's Guide To Me, and I'm Paul Mesco. The first project that I'd like to talk about, and there's probably a running theme of sadness that is very much present in my work, but the first project I'm going to talk about is Normal People. It came out in 2020 on BBC and Hulu. We shot it in 2019 after a pretty extensive casting process. The reason Normal People is part of my list is because there wouldn't be a list to begin with without that show. If I'm stopped on the street, more than likely it's going to be to talk about normal people, and I feel very lucky that the thing that people tend to stop me about is something that I'm also incredibly proud of. The series is essentially about two people falling in and out of each other's lives, and I think it's a rare example of television that's becoming more common where there's not so much a narrative focus. It's a study of two people's lives. Connell's a great example of somebody who's both incredibly relatable and also deeply frustrating to watch. Myself and Daisy Wee Today had a charity screening in the Prince Charles Cinema. It was an interesting experience feeling an audience be frustrated with the person that you adore. Then there's a scene, for example, when Sarah Green, who plays Lorraine, my mum, in the show where she kind of berates Connell for not stepping up to the mark, and the audience applauded. It was an interesting experience watching it with an audience because television, we never get to see it in the cinema. It also came out during COVID, so there was a particular energy in the room where it was full of super fans of the show who were very much, I think, especially in the early episodes, team Marianne, which is fair. It feels almost like a fever dream. My life kind of changed overnight. None of us expected that show to be as big as it was, and then overnight there's people outside your house waiting to take photographs of you. It's weird. I actually do kind of see Connell as my friend. I see a very distinct idea of where he is in the world, what he's doing. I would say that he's very loyal, intensely frustrating. He's got a depth to him that's kind of very hard to fathom, I think. I haven't done it since, and I think that job certainly has spoiled that experience for me in a good way, where I think I'd struggle to go back to television unless the character was as rich as Connell is. I really enjoyed it because the material was kind of always giving you something new to play. He feels like both a version of myself and also a version of friends and people that I know and care deeply about. After Sun was written and directed by my friend Charlotte Wells. It was her first feature that she directed. We shot it in Turkey in 2021. It's part of my list because I take great pride in independent cinema and having been involved with that for a couple of years. And to see a film that was kind of privately financed break into a bigger market and people respond to it. And it kind of reaffirmed the fact that I think audiences want to be challenged by filmmakers and scripts that aren't kind of run-of-the-mill. And to be associated with that is great. I got to work with the most amazing director and the most amazing co-star in Frankie Corio, who played my daughter in the film. To put it simply, it's about a father and a daughter on a kind of budget holiday in Turkey. And as the film kind of unravels, you get a sense that all is not well with Callum, who I played. But it's a very subtle meditation on memory, time, love, loss. I find it to be a very moving film. One of the main things that I'm proud of with that job is the amount of restraint that's in the filmmaking and in the performance. Because the whole remit is that you can't show your daughter the pain that you're in. Which made me nervous the whole time, because it's like, what if the audience don't get that he's suffering? You take your opportunities of the kind of suffering where you can get it, but they're few and far between. Audiences are smart, and they can pick up on the kind of subliminal messaging of it. There are scenes in it that are kind of just intensely moving between the two of them, like the karaoke scene. When Frankie turns to Callum and says... Stop doing that. Doing what? Offering to pay for something when I know you don't have any money. And that to him is like the center point where he feels inadequate. I always see Callum as this kind of loose, Willy Loman character from Death of a Salesman. Where he's got this innate imagination and has these dreams for the life that he wants to live and provide for his daughter. But it's not kind of marrying up to the reality that he's living. It's a very interesting place to have a character for a film. It's all of us strangers. It's directed by Andrew Haig with Andrew Scott opposite me and Claire Foy and Jamie Bell. All of Us Strangers is based on a Japanese novel just called Strangers. But it kind of evolved for Andrew Haig who wrote it and directed it into this more personal meditation on loneliness and life in your middle age, I suppose. So I played Harry. He lives in the same apartment block as Andrew Scott's character, Adam. And they forge this sexy, romantic, painful relationship. It's probably similar to Callum. He's able to hide his feelings from those around him in an attempt to protect them. Which I think is both a very noble disposition but also one that's kind of self-harming in another context. Who on planet Earth isn't a fan of Andrew Scott? And if they are, I'll have a word with them. He's an absolute genius. I think it's impossible for that man to turn in even a mediocre performance. He's, in my opinion, one of our greats. It's kind of the perfect example of his understanding of craft. But also his well of emotionality is when he's explaining what happened in the car crash to his parents to me. He's describing the events but I think in the hands of a lesser actor who becomes dense and heavy. And he knows where to play that but he also knows where to make it funny. Which is such an incredible instinct. He's describing this to Harry and Harry says the line where he's like, I know what it's like to stop caring about yourself. I know how easy it can be to stop caring about yourself. It's like just a feast for subtext. The way he colours his performances, he always takes an avenue that you don't expect but it feels when you watch it. And it's the only way that anyone could ever play a scene. My favourite thing about the job is that you can be as private or as public with your information as you want. It's not like a musician or an artist or anything like that where normally they're writing about life. Whereas with acting you can kind of pick and choose things that are intensely personal. And nobody will ever see it unless you decide to share it. I'm not going to share that. Because I also think it's not in a sense to be kind of obscure. It's actually to do with the fact that there's value in privacy. In the sense that you can keep little pockets of yourself hidden away. Because the minute you give them away to an audience, the magic's gone. It's like the magician's never going to show their tricks. But my acting teacher in drama school said something that I love to stick to. Which is you should never pull the character down to fit you. In terms of the size of what they are, you should always be reaching for what they are and what they need to come through. We live in a world where there's an access to people who are in the public eye that is not conducive actually to being creative. I kind of say that the theme of sadness is obviously just a total broad stroke. And I think that there's amazing joy to be found in all of these things. Life for people presently in their 20s and 30s isn't easy. I look at my parents and they were settled and had kids in their late 20s. That's just not available to people. That's also what you're predisposed to. What films I'm drawn to is kind of what I want to do in my work. And I think there is an overwhelming theme of love in all of those films. You see in each of those characters a desire to be a better version of themselves and struggling with it. And I think that's such rich territory to play in because you're constantly playing up to the dream idea of you. And kind of suffering the reality of your own limitations as a human being. But also I'm excited for Gladiator to come out. Which is a totally different pocket of humanity that I don't think you could draw any comparisons to. Or something like Stanley in Streetcar. It's all within us all I think. Gladiator was like nothing that I've ever experienced. Nor do I think I'll ever experience something like that again. Directed by the king Ridley Scott. I think the scale of it is something to behold. And I think the story is again rooted in a hero's journey. And trying to navigate all of the pitfalls of society. And that society just happens to be in ancient Roman times. Ridley's a genius in that the whole vision is available to you. He builds these sets 360 where it's like if you can't act in that I don't think you can act. There's nothing left to the imagination. You're just in a coliseum. You're in a cell. You're in these environments that he just builds. He's unbelievably fast but that's because he knows exactly what he wants. Acting is acting is acting. It's like your obligation isn't to the scale of the production it's to the character. And sometimes it's really fun when you just have more toys to play with and a bigger budget. But ultimately your obligation is to the character. The society of ancient Rome but it's also talking about society concurrently with the one that we're living. Power corrupts. Greed is still present. There's a cycle in history that we've never managed to crack nor do I think we will. The themes that keep popping up for us as human beings are ones that cause an immense amount of destruction and pain. But also take away whatever you want. I hope you enjoy it. I had a ball making it. I was thinking a lot more about the Roman Empire last year but yeah. I hope you enjoyed these projects if you've seen them and if you haven't hopefully this is a reference point.