Paul Mescal Breaks Down His Filmography
Ready to dive into the career of GQ Cover Star Paul Mescal? Who better to take you through his most memorable roles than the man himself? Paul reflects on the making of the miniseries 'Normal People' as well as the films 'Aftersun,' 'All Of Us Strangers,' and the new 2024 film 'Gladiator II.'
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00:00It's a pretty fun way to audition.
00:01If all auditions were smoking and dancing around my hotel room,
00:05I'd be a much happier actor.
00:07Hello GQ, this is The Beginner's Guide To Me,
00:10and I'm Paul Metzgoff.
00:16The first project that I'd like to talk about,
00:19and there's probably a running theme of sadness
00:22that is very much present in my work,
00:24but the first project I'm going to talk about is Normal People.
00:27It came out in 2020 on BBC and Hulu.
00:30We shot it in 2019 after a pretty extensive casting process.
00:35The reason Normal People is part of my list
00:36is because there wouldn't be a list to begin with without that show.
00:40If I'm stopped in the street, more than likely it's going to be
00:42to talk about normal people,
00:44and I feel very lucky that the thing that people tend to stop me about
00:48is something that I'm also incredibly proud of.
00:50The series is essentially about two people
00:53falling in and out of each other's lives,
00:55and I think it's a rare example of television
00:58that's becoming more common where there's not so much a narrative focus.
01:02It's a study of two people's lives.
01:05Connell's a great example of somebody who's both incredibly relatable
01:08and also deeply frustrating to watch.
01:11Myself and Daisy did a charity screening in the Prince Charles cinema.
01:15It was an interesting experience feeling an audience
01:18be frustrated with the person that you adore.
01:21Then there's a scene, for example, when Sarah Green,
01:23who plays Lorraine, my mum, in the show,
01:25where she kind of berates Connell for not stepping up to the mark,
01:28and the audience applauded.
01:30It was an interesting experience watching it with an audience
01:33because television, we never get to see it in the cinema,
01:36and it also came out during COVID,
01:37so there was a particular energy in the room
01:40where it was full of super fans of the show,
01:43who were very much, I think, especially in the early episodes,
01:46team Marianne, which is fair.
01:49It feels almost like a fever dream.
01:51My life kind of changed overnight.
01:54None of us expected that show to be as big as it was,
01:57and then overnight there's people outside your house
02:00waiting to take photographs of you.
02:02It's weird, I actually do kind of see Connell as my friend.
02:05Like, I see a very distinct idea of where he is in the world,
02:08what he's doing.
02:09I would say that he's very loyal, intensely frustrating.
02:13He's got a depth to him that's kind of very hard to fathom, I think.
02:18I haven't done it since,
02:19and I think that job certainly has spoiled that experience for me
02:24in a good way, where I think I'd struggle to go back to television
02:28unless the character was as rich as Connell is.
02:31I really enjoyed it because the material was kind of
02:34always giving you something new to play.
02:36Like, he feels like both a version of myself
02:39and also a version of friends and people that I know
02:41and care deeply about.
02:43After Sun.
02:46After Sun was written and directed by my friend Charlotte Wells.
02:49It was her first feature that she directed.
02:52We shot it in Turkey in 2021.
02:57It's part of my list because I take great pride in independent cinema
03:02and having been involved with that for a couple of years,
03:05and to see a film that was kind of privately financed
03:08break into a bigger market and people respond to it
03:11and it kind of reaffirmed the fact that I think audiences
03:13want to be challenged by filmmakers and scripts
03:15that aren't kind of run-of-the-mill,
03:18and to be associated with that is great.
03:22I got to work with the most amazing director
03:23and the most amazing co-star in Frankie Corio,
03:26who played my daughter in the film.
03:28To put it simply, it's about a father and a daughter
03:31on a kind of budget holiday in Turkey.
03:33And as the film kind of unravels,
03:35you get a sense that all is not well with Callum,
03:39but it's a very subtle meditation on memory, time, love, loss.
03:44I find it to be a very moving film.
03:47One of the main things that I'm proud of with that job
03:49is the amount of restraint that's in the filmmaking
03:51and in the performance because the whole remit
03:54is that you can't show your daughter the pain that you're in,
03:57which made me nervous the whole time because it's like,
04:00what if the audience don't get that he's suffering?
04:02So you take your opportunities of the kind of suffering
04:04that you're going through and you're like,
04:06you take your opportunities of the kind of suffering
04:08where you can get it, but they're few and far between.
04:11Audiences are smart and they can pick up
04:13on the kind of subliminal messaging of it.
04:15There are scenes in it that are kind of just
04:17intensely moving between the two of them
04:19where like karaoke scene, when Frankie turns to Callum
04:23and says,
04:23Stop doing that.
04:25Doing what?
04:26Offering to pay for something
04:27when I know you don't have any money.
04:29And that to him is like the center point
04:31where he feels inadequate.
04:32I always see Callum as this kind of like loose
04:35Willy Loman character from Death of a Salesman
04:37where he's got this innate imagination
04:40and has these dreams for the life that he wants to live
04:43and provide for his daughter,
04:44but it's not kind of marrying up to the reality
04:46that he's living.
04:47And it's a very interesting place
04:48to have a character for a film.
04:52All of Us Strangers.
04:54It's directed by Andrew Haig with Andrew Scott opposite me
04:58and Claire Foy and Jamie Bell.
05:00All of Us Strangers is based on a Japanese novel
05:02just called Strangers,
05:03but it kind of evolved for Andrew Haig
05:05who wrote it and directed it
05:06into this more personal meditation on loneliness
05:11and life in your kind of, in your middle age, I suppose.
05:15So I played Harry.
05:16He lives in the same apartment block
05:19as Andrew Scott's character, Adam,
05:21and they forge this sexy, romantic, painful relationship.
05:27It's probably similar to Callum,
05:29like it's able to hide his feelings
05:30from those around him in an attempt
05:33to protect them, which I think is both
05:35a very noble disposition,
05:38but also one that's kind of self-harming
05:41in another context.
05:43Who on planet Earth isn't a fan of Andrew Scott?
05:45And if they are, I'll have a word with them.
05:47He's an absolute genius.
05:48Like I think it's impossible for that man
05:50to turn in even a mediocre performance.
05:52He's, in my opinion, one of our greats.
05:54It's kind of the perfect example
05:56of his understanding of craft,
05:58but also his like well of emotionality
06:02is when he's explaining what happened
06:05in the car crash, his parents, to me.
06:07He's describing the events,
06:08but I think in the hands of a lesser actor
06:10who become dense and heavy,
06:12and he knows where to play that,
06:14but he also knows where to make it funny,
06:16which is such an incredible instinct.
06:18He's describing this to Harry,
06:20and Harry says the line where he's like,
06:21I know what it's like to stop caring about yourself.
06:24I know how easy it can be to stop caring about yourself.
06:26It's like just a feast for like subtext.
06:29The way he color his performances,
06:31he always takes like an avenue that you don't expect,
06:34but it feels when you watch it,
06:35and it's the only way that anyone could ever play a scene.
06:37My favorite thing about the job
06:39is that you can be as private or as public
06:40with your information as you want.
06:42Like it's not like a musician or an artist
06:44or anything like that where normally
06:46they're writing about life,
06:48whereas with acting, you can kind of pick and choose things
06:51that are intensely personal,
06:53and nobody will ever see it unless you decide to share it.
06:56I'm not going to share that,
06:58because I also think it's not in a sense
07:00to be kind of obscure.
07:01It's actually to do with the fact
07:03that there's value in privacy in the sense
07:06that you can keep little pockets of yourself hidden away,
07:09because the minute you give them away to an audience,
07:12the magic's gone.
07:13It's like the magician's never going to show their tricks.
07:17But my acting teacher in drama school
07:20said something that I love to like stick to,
07:21which is like, you should never pull the character down
07:24to fit you.
07:25Like in terms of the size of what they are,
07:27you should always be reaching for what they are
07:29and what they need to come through.
07:31We live in a world where there's an access
07:33to people who are in the public eye
07:35that is not conducive actually to being creative.
07:39I kind of say that the theme of sadness
07:40is like it's obviously just a total broad stroke.
07:44And I think that there's amazing joy to be found
07:47in all of these things.
07:48Life for people presently in their like 20s and 30s
07:52isn't easy.
07:54Like I look at my parents and they were like settled
07:57and had kids in their late 20s.
07:59That's just not available to people.
08:01Like I know, that's also what you're predisposed to.
08:04Like what films I'm drawn to is kind of what I want to do
08:07in my work.
08:08And I think there is an overwhelming theme of like love
08:11in all of those films.
08:13You see in each of those characters
08:16a desire to be a better version of themselves
08:19and struggling with it.
08:20And I think that's such rich territory to play in
08:22because you're constantly like playing up
08:25to the dream idea of you
08:26and kind of suffering the reality of like
08:28your own limitations as a human being.
08:31But also like I'm excited for like Gladiator to come out
08:35which is a totally different pocket of humanity
08:37that I don't think you could draw any comparisons to
08:40or something like Stanley in Streetcar.
08:43It's all within us all, I think.
08:48Gladiator was like nothing that I've ever experienced
08:51nor do I think I'll ever experience
08:52something like that again.
08:53Directed by the King, Ridley Scott.
08:56I think the scale of it is something to behold
08:58and I think the story is again rooted in a hero's journey
09:01and trying to navigate all of the pitfalls of society
09:04and that society just happens to be
09:07in ancient Roman times.
09:08Ridley's a genius in that the whole vision
09:11is available to you.
09:12He builds these sets 360 where it's like
09:14if you can't act in that, I don't think you can act.
09:16There's nothing left to the imagination.
09:18You're just in a Coliseum.
09:20You're in a cell.
09:21You're in these environments that he just builds.
09:23He's unbelievably fast
09:25but that's because he knows exactly what he wants.
09:26Acting is acting is acting.
09:28It's like your obligation isn't to the scale
09:30of the production, it's to the character.
09:33And sometimes it's really fun
09:34when you just have more toys to play with
09:36and a bigger budget
09:37but ultimately your obligation is to the character.
09:39The society of ancient Rome
09:40but it's also talking about society concurrently
09:42with the one that we're living.
09:43Power corrupts, greed is still present.
09:45There's a cycle in history that we've never managed to crack
09:48nor do I think we will.
09:50Themes that keep popping up for us as human beings
09:52are ones that cause an immense amount
09:54of destruction and pain
09:55but also take away whatever you want.
09:57I hope you enjoy it.
09:59I had a ball making it.
10:00I was thinking a lot more about the Roman Empire last year
10:02but yeah, I hope you enjoyed these projects
10:06if you've seen them and if you haven't
10:08hopefully this is a reference point.