PAUL MESCAL was CATAPULTED to the TOP of HOLLYWOOD'S A-LIST and became an INTERNET OBSESSION along the way. But he's still figuring out WHAT HE WANTS from all of it.

Paul Mescal is showing me his short shorts. From his hotel room in Morocco, where he’s currently filming Gladiator 2, Ridley Scott’s highly anticipated sequel to his 2000 Oscar-winning film, the 27- year-old Irish actor indulges me when I ask if he’s got a favorite pair.

- ANDREA CUTTLER

“This is thrilling to me,” he says. “I love it. Where’s my favorite pair?” he asks, nearly knocking over his chair to find them. “I don’t know how I would go about my summer if I didn’t have these. I don’t do well in the heat,” he says, holding up a black pair with three white stripes down each side. They’re O’Neills, an Irish brand of Gaelic football shorts, he tells me. During his recent West End run in A Streetcar Named Desire, fans lined up regularly at the stage door to catch a glimpse of the actor heading out for a post-matinee run in thigh-grazing ’80s-style shorts. He grins and says, “[O’Neills] are going to get great fuckin’ airtime out of this.”

Mescal is mostly accepting of the attention that followed his breakout role in Hulu’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal  People three years ago and his subsequent ascent to stardom. The series—hailed for its tender depiction of a young relationship, including its hyperrealistic sex scenes—streamed into homes during the spring of 2020, reaching an audience that was, after weeks of Covid lockdowns, pent up. Mescal received an Emmy nomination for his soulful portrayal of Connell, and he (as well as that thin silver chain his character wore) became the subject of the internet’s unhinged lust. “If I’m going to make TV shows like Normal People, there’s going to be an appetite from the world,” he says of the public’s interest in his personal life. “Eighty percent of that is palatable. And then 20 percent of it is devastating.”