LONDON — Appendicitis helped Paul Mezcal slow down.
Since the beginning of the year, the Irish actor has criss-crossed the continent, attending film festivals in support of his latest film, After Sun, and shooting projects in the UK and Australia. But he said in his recent interview at a London hotel that his illness earlier this month was “a blessing in disguise” as he had to spend a week at home with his family.
This isn’t the first time the 26-year-old actor has appreciated a break.
Mezcal has been working consistently since playing Connell on Hulu’s TV series Normal People in 2020, earning her an Emmy nomination and status as a sex symbol.
Adapted from Sally Rooney’s best-selling novel, the show arrived shortly after the coronavirus pandemic, and during the months of lockdown that followed, Mezcal said he was “uncomfortable” with the trend of attention he was getting. He said paparazzi followed him around London and in interviews journalists asked him questions like whether the show had helped him.sleepy” Mezcal has deleted his social media accounts and left London.
It’s “really difficult” to talk about objectification, he said, admitting that the experience was familiar to many women in his industry and could have higher stakes for them. Years after the initial explosion of fame, Mezcal said, “I feel like my feet have dropped slightly to the ground.”
Since then, he’s weighed the projects he chooses carefully, avoiding the blockbuster movies that often land after breakout roles in which actors garner attention. I searched for complex characters and prioritized working with a respected director over the size of the parts.
In the film, Charlotte Wells’ directorial debut, Mezcal plays Calum, the 30-year-old Scottish father of 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio). Together they spend a week at a resort in Turkey, playing snooker, water polo, and karaoke. The film is guided by their conversation and captures how Callum protects her daughter from depression.
In “Normal People,” Connell also struggled with his mental health and sought therapy to process his emotions. “There’s something really scary about it,” he said.
Before recently starting therapy, Mezcal was worried he was “ruining” his acting career by keeping emotional turmoil out of acting. said.
As Mezcal’s Calum, “gently aware of the complexity” of the character “walking in a quiet well of anguish,” filmmaker Barry Jenkins wrote in an email interview. rice field.
Mezcal said the film was shot in “two specific rhythms.” The “really fast and fun” father-daughter sequence and a scene where Callum suffers alone and doesn’t have to be on set for Korio.
Mezcal said, “I found the private moments really upsetting. In one of those scenes, Calum sits naked on her bed at night and cries bitterly.” I know,” he recalled telling Wells on set.
A hit on the 2022 festival circuit, “After Sun” garnered critical acclaim. Manohla Dargis, writing for The New York Times, called it “one of the strongest films she’s seen” at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which premiered in May. Production company A24 purchased the U.S. distribution rights before the festival ended, and it arrived in theaters on October 21st.
The script is based on Welles’ own experience, which she has divided into several sections. The difficult subject matter meant that she hadn’t fully read the script when it came time to cast, but Mezcal said she had three times before the first call, and that point in the production process. Wells said it displayed a dedication that he felt was “unthinkable”. During the phone call, Welles saw the actor’s “dedication to being a good person,” she said, and when she hung up, she said, “I’m in a rush to know you’ve found someone great.” ‘ I remember feeling.
Wells likes to control the set, but “I love the point of delegating that control to a collaborator to improve that part of the process,” she said. He was a capable person.”
Mezcal was born in Maynooth, a university town west of Dublin, in 1996. His mother was a member of the Irish Police and his father was an elementary school teacher, active when Mezcal was young.
Growing up, he loved playing Gaelic football, a variation of Irish football, until his role in a high school musical landed him a starring role in The Phantom of the Opera. In his final years, Mezcal eschewed a career that would allow him to continue playing professionally if unpaid, instead applying to drama school.
Dublin’s Lil Academy accepted him based solely on his audition and before he had the results of his final exams. Mezcal’s parents supported his career choice. “He’s grounded and clearly comes out of love,” wrote her co-star Olivia Colman in 2021’s “The Lost Daughter,” in her email interview.
Along with her family, Mezcal now has more elements to stabilize her life, including her partner, musician Phoebe Bridgers, and her pet dog. Those are his structures, he said.
This winter, Mezcal will play another complex character. Stanley Kowalski is the crusty antihero in Rebecca His Frecknall’s A Streetcar Named Desire, at his Almeida theater in London. Ever since Mezcal was in drama school, he wanted to play this role. That’s when the teacher tells him that Mitch, the play’s more obviously sensitive male counterpart, is a better fit.
However, despite describing Stanley as “incredibly toxic”, Mezcal sees him as smart, bullied, and struggling with class status. , recalled his bond with Mezcal over the different shades of the character “living in contradiction”.
In the summer of 2020, when Frecknall agreed to speak with Mescal on the recommendation of a casting director, the process of finding someone to fill this role duality began. At first, she thought Mezcal was too young to play Stanley, but when Marlon Brando starred in the 1951 film adaptation, she realized he was the same age as Marlon Brando. I met him on lockdown zooming in from my bedroom floor,” said Frecknall. Even after the success of “Normal People”, she said, “He felt like a stage animal to me.”
Rehearsals begin in London at the end of the month, and Mezcal said he was excited but “certainly anxious.” I was in a production of He said there were no prisoners on stage.
Mezcal’s upcoming on-screen projects, such as the gay World War I romance The History of Sound and British director Andrew Haigh’s Strangers, are still short of blockbusters.
He’s read screenplays for movies of that quality and budget, but he’s thinking strategically about the future. “I feel protective that the smaller cinematic space is shrinking more and more. How can you balance political thinking with making action movies and spy thrillers?”
The closest he’s made to the genre so far is Garth Davis’s Enemy, which Mezcal describes as “a kitchen-sink drama with sci-fi elements.” He was filmed in Australia earlier this year alongside another Irish actor, Saoirse Ronan. The pair play her husband and wife and share nearly every scene together.
“When he’s in, he’s in,” Ronan said in a phone interview about working with Mezcal. “It becomes his whole world. But at the same time, Paul never goes away.”