PAUL MESCAL BODY & SOUL

FIVE YEARS AFTER HIS BREAKOUT ROLE, THE IN-DEMAND ACTOR IS CALLING THE SHOTS

- By Jennie Noonan

At the end of April 2020, millions of viewers around the world watched relative unknowns Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal play out a tumultuous affair between schoolmates-turned-unlikely lovers in Normal People, Sally Rooney's heart-wrenching love story set in Ireland. Audiences - already emotionally battered from the first round of pandemic lockdowns - fell in love with Mescal's vulnerable performance in the 12-episode series that catapulted him to superstardom. His subsequent roles, including an Oscar-nominated turn as a single dad battling depression in Aftersun, a troubled neighbour in All of Us Strangers and tormented, tenacious warrior Lucius in Gladiator II - cemented his status as the internet's favourite brooding boyfriend.

“I would call it soulfulness rather than sadness,” Andrew Scott, who played Mescal’s love interest in All of Us Strangers, told Rolling Stone in September. “I think that’s what people can detect in him. He’s got a really deep, beautiful soul, and so of course he’s going to be attracted to things that have deep, deep soul in them.”

Mescal’s two latest projects, The History of Sound and Hamnet (in cinemas December 18 and January 15 respectively), explore even deeper emotional terrain. He was in a hotel room in Who|29 Australia in late 2020, after completing quarantine for Benjamin Millepied’s Carmen, when he first read the screenplay for The History of Sound - a decades-spanning drama set in early 20th-century America that follows the love story of folk music aficionados Lionel (played by Mescal) and David (The Crown’s Josh O'Connor).

"I remember, I was reading in bed and I was bawling," Mescal, 29, told