Paul Mescal: ‘The characters are vastly more interesting than I’ll ever be’
The Irish actor trades in his art house cred for A-list status as he enters the arena in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II.
“That’s a great cardi,” are the first words out of Gladiator II star Paul Mescal’s mouth when Review walks into a hotel room at the swanky Park Hyatt to meet him and his co-stars Connie Nielsen and Fred Hechinger. It’s high praise from a man whose own knitwear choices inspire in men’s fashion bibles fawning headlines like “Paul Mescal slays in the only sweater you really need” and “Wild, wild cardigan is textbook Paul Mescal.”
Here he is, in a cropped plaid sweater, cuddling a couch pillow, sandwiched between Nielsen and Hechinger. She is in a powder blue power suit — the focal point in this austere, everything-beige room — and Hechinger, well, his stylist has clearly dipped into the Mescal manual. The three are in Sydney for the world premiere of Gladiator II. The event, held at the ICC Theatre in Darling Harbour, was an unspeakably lush spectacle befitting a film with a reported budget of $US310m ($474m). Blood-red floral arrangements dripped from six-foot pithoi, a buttery champagne carpet stretched across the entrance. “There was an orchestra and everything,” says Mescal in his soft Irish voice, sounding somewhat overwhelmed by it all.
It’s easy to forget this is Mescal’s first “big film”. To a certain demographic — namely sensitive young women — the 28-year-old is the most famous film star on the planet. He broke out in Normal People, BBC’s cerebral bonkfest adapted from the best-selling Sally Rooney novel, unleashed in the thick of the pandemic, when everyone was emotionally frail. This, strategically or not, was followed with a series of elegant indie roles designed to drive the zeitgeist nuts. There was a small, scene-stealing performance in The Lost Daughter, the first film adaptation of an Elena Ferrante novel (whose devoted female fans have spurred the term Ferrante Fever); an Oscar-nominated turn in the gauzy, gutting film Aftersun; and a role that invited full-body sobbing in Andrew Haigh’s gay melodrama All of Us Strangers.
This week, he’ll trade in his art house cred for A-list status when he enters the arena as Lucius, son of Maximus (Russell Crowe in the original 2000 picture) in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II. The ginormous, insane (hello, hand-to-hand combat with baboons), gleefully historically dubious (sharks in the Colosseum?) film picks up the story 16 years after Scott’s Best Picture winner. We are in Numidia, North Africa where Lucius was sent by his mother Lucilla (Nielsen’s noblewoman) at the end of the first film. He’s built a new life there — found peace, and a woman to love — but, of course, that’s not to last. Enter the fearsome Roman general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), who pillages the village at the behest of the impish twin emperors Caracalla (Hechinger) and Geta (Joseph Quinn), drawing Lucius back to his brutal birthplace.
It’s no secret that actors go to extremes for Scott. The press tour for House of Gucci saw Lady Gaga claim that she lived as the bloodthirsty diva Patrizia Reggiani for nine months, so deeply inhabiting the character that she believed she’d actually murdered Maurizio Gucci. Then there was last year’s Napoleon, where Joaquin Phoenix and Scott spent several 12-hour days psychoanalysing the emperor to get to the core of him.
“I think that’s how he (Scott) tells the story, but I’m sure it’s a little less than 12 hours,” Nielsen jokes. Mescal swings to Scott’s defence: “I wouldn’t be surprised,” he says. “Not that I know Joaquin, but I would have loved to be a fly on the wall…”
Nielsen, 59, likens returning to her role of Lucilla after 24 years to reconnecting with an old friend “but at the same time it was so interesting putting into her the actual experience of a woman whose lived a life”.
Speaking with her, one gets sense she is clearly more comfortable taking the mickey out of their knighted 86-year-old director than her two younger co-stars — who speak with wide-eyed reverence. “I feel like he’s always playing this character — the gruff director,” she says. “It’s almost like he’s making fun of a movie director character.
“There is a secret sauce to him for us as actors. He’s not quite your dad but he has this proud parent expectation. He also understands that he needs to be listening actively to what you’re saying. Which he does. Not every director knows how to listen actively. He’s very strong in his opinion which makes me feel really secure because I know that it pushes me to do my best work. I can go overboard. I can be a little crazy.”
“That’s kind of our job,” says Mescal. “To bring all the crazy versions of ourselves to it.”
Preparing for Gladiator II was no light work. Mescal, a former Gaelic football player, had to bulk up — something that “required diligence but not a lot of thought” and an awful lot of protein. But there was no Daniel Day-Lewis-level devotion to inhabiting the characters. “When you work with European actors, especially British actors, they don’t really do the method thing at all,” says Nielsen. “Paul was being a perfect gentleman.”
“I don’t generally go to a personal place when I’m building a character,” Mescal says. It’s a surprising admission, considering his knack for playing wounded, psychologically complex characters, and one he credits to a piece of advice he once received from his acting teacher: “The characters you play are generally vastly more interesting than you will ever be.” It sounds brutal, but Mescal insists it was a gift.
“(It means) you’re never going to try to apply your lived experience to someone. You’re never trying to pull the character down to fit you, you’re trying to reach up and fit it.”
All this method acting talk brings to mind the famous showbiz story between Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier. A brief digression: while working on the 1976 film Marathon Man, Hoffman had an intense scene coming up, in which his character hadn’t slept for three days. He told Olivier that to prepare, he too hadn’t slept for 72 hours. “My dear boy,” replied Olivier, “why don’t you try acting?”.
Which leads us to a corker essay Olivier penned for The New York Times in 1986, where he wrote: “To me acting is a technical problem. It’s also an emotional problem. You’ve got to feel, which is a great test for the imagination.” Does it resonate? “What a way to put it,” Mescal says, with a sharp exhale. “I think that’s my perpetual anxiety with every role that I approach.”
There are certain tools in his arsenal that he will return to: going over the script with a fine-tooth comb, allowing each page to bombard his imagination.
“I think, in general, actors have to retain a childlike curiosity and imagination that you lose sometimes as an adult,” Mescal says. “That’s why I love this job so much. You’re constantly reminding yourself to be viciously imaginative. The main focus is keeping your curiosity open to who this person is. The root of Lucius, to me, is someone you would see in the ‘angry young men’ plays. This is a person who feels totally disenfranchised. You get this sense of visceral fury. Then you’ve got to fill it in by asking the basic question: Why?”
Hechinger, who has been sitting quietly, letting his two more experienced colleagues hold court, chimes in meekly: “I think filmmaking is the coalescence of a million problems arriving at a solution,” he says. “Every movie, everyone is carrying their own dream and you hurl it together into something that becomes immensely practical. That practicality is the symbol of the soul … right?” he says, looking at Nielsen and Mescal for approval.
“Exactly,” Mescal nods. “Underneath it there’s all the emotion that you’re talking about, but it has to be made practical. It’s the only way to get it into existence.”
This, Nielsen says, is why she doesn’t watch the films she stars in: “Because my experience and joy was in the discovery of it. Once it’s become an amalgamated thing. It’s already past the moment.”
“Well, it doesn’t belong to us anymore,” offers Paul. “Exactly,” says Nielsen.
So she doesn’t like watching herself? “I never watch myself.” Ever? “No.” Have you seen Gladiator II. “No.”
Mescal chimes in, teasing: “You’re going to watch it in London though…” The whole cast are locked in for that premiere. “I will wear a mask and headphones,” says Nielsen definitively.
A moment of praise for Hechinger, though, who steals every scene he’s in — even those where he is going tit-for-tat with Denzel Washington. Without the presence of the terrible twosome — Emperor Caracalla and Geta — Gladiator II could risk devolving into a parade of moping and massacres. But there’s a sneakily funny streak to it, largely thanks to their delicious duel performances, which recall young Gary Oldman and Tim Roth in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. When this comparison is mentioned, Hechinger lights up: “Have you seen Meantime? It’s early Mike Leigh with Tim Roth and Gary Oldman. They’re extraordinary together in that!” It’s very sweet.
If Gladiator II is a big deal for Mescal, it’s hard to imagine how Hechinger feels. At 25, he may be pint-sized, but he has a kind of thespian freak energy that feels out of time. When he talks about his time making Gladiator II, it’s with breathless enthusiasm. “Ridley lives and breathes cinema,” he says. “There’s no place in the world he’d rather be than on set.
“The sheer passion and energy he emanates when you walk into the colosseum on a Monday morning and you see his readiness is really infectious.”
Production on Gladiator II was interrupted midstream, and put on hold for four months because of the Hollywood strikes. Was it difficult to reconnect with the characters after such a long time off?
“Reconnecting wasn’t hard,” says Mescal.
“I found I have very little patience as a person with constant desire. I felt like a dog on a leash that was yanking. I hadn’t made a film of that scale and we were in the swing of things and for 118 days I was waking up and checking the trades to see how the latest round of negotiations were going. Getting back to work feels like an oasis. I feel like I’m a better version of myself when I’m at work than when I’m away from work.”
“Be that the truth,” says Nielsen.
Gladiator II is in cinemas nationally.
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