Normal People’s Paul Mescal: ‘It’s slightly scary’
A month ago Paul Mescal had never been on TV. Now he’s the star of the hot new show Normal People. How’s he coping?
A few days before interviewing Paul Mescal, I ask a number of women – normal, well-adjusted, grown-up women – about their feelings for the 24-year-old actor. Or rather, more precisely, I ask about their feelings for Connell, the character Mescal plays in the BBC adaptation of Normal People, the bestselling novel by Sally Rooney. If you are one of the millions of people (16 million alone in the UK) who binged on Normal People during its first week then you will already know all this but, very briefly, the 12-part drama tracks the on-off relationship between Connell and Marianne, the story’s other central protagonist, as they graduate from school to university to young adult life. Where Connell is sporty, popular and working class, Marianne is a bookish loner from a wealthy family. Yet the two are drawn to each other and, very quickly, come to find that they share an intense intellectual and sexual connection.
This connection drives the story forward. Five minutes into the second episode, they make passionate, doona-clenching love in Connell’s teenage bedroom and, from that point on, they never really stop. Normal People is excellent for many reasons: the performances, the cinematography, the justice it does to Rooney’s Booker-nominated novel. But ultimately, if you like the idea of watching a good-looking, emotionally intelligent Irish guy as his silver chain gently slaps against his sweaty, meaty torso during mutually orgasmic throes, then… yeah. You will probably like it.
Anyway, as a result of all this, Mescal has suddenly become the most desired man on TV. If a lack of physical intimacy during lockdown has been, for many, a barely containable hormonal bin fire, then Connell has arrived like a big slug of paraffin. “He’s bright but not arrogant, idealistic and realistic at the same time and a sensitive lover,” says one of the women I survey. “He’s broad and hunky without knowing he is broad and hunky, which makes him feel accessible,” explains another. “It’s the eyes, the chain, the accent.” “He’s mature, which is sexy, quietly confident and so respectful of Marianne. I was very relieved when I found out he was of legal age.”
I read this all out to Mescal, who absorbs it with the unblinking concentration of a man in the dock. Then there is a short silence. “It’s slightly scary, isn’t it?” he says eventually, choosing his words. “The sexual thing.”
A month ago, Mescal had never even been on TV. Now he is having to deal with The Sexual Thing. Sometimes actors can get a bit arsey when it’s pointed out to them that a character they play is a fantasy figure or dreamboat, as though this somehow detracts from their performance. But while Mescal says he never meant to make Connell so… desirable, he’s definitely not going to moan about it. “I just wanted to portray him as somebody who is young and healthy and smart and interesting,” he says. “And if people find that sexy, it’s definitely not a bad thing. It’s not my business to veto people’s opinions of the character.”
One thing he does find confusing is the obsession with Connell’s chain, which has come to serve as a visual leitmotiv associated with his character’s sexual prowess. There is, for instance, an Instagram account with 55,000 followers dedicated to images of Connell wearing it during the show. “Personally, I’ve worn a chain for years. So I was like, ‘Jesus, have I been sexy this whole time?’” he says, feigning existential doubt. “I think maybe the chain thing is that it’s this absolute crystallisation of him. It’s not something that would fit the identities of any other characters in the show.”
Mescal is currently in lockdown, living on his own in his east London flat, which, all things considered, is probably the safest place for him to be right now. He is broad and athletic, with a strong Roman nose and bright blue eyes. He is also thoughtful, funny and talkative, describing the surreal nature of seeing his debut project become this phenomenon while he passes his days in total solitude. “I think self-isolating is the best thing that could have happened,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of time to myself to process things.” He’s been going on daily runs and speaking to friends, family and fellow cast members on the phone as the scale of the acclaim for the show has become apparent.
Also, it becomes pretty clear pretty quickly that Mescal is not completely taken aback by the response to the sex between himself and Daisy Edgar-Jones, who plays Marianne. “I think there is a really healthy-slash-sexy depiction of a sexual relationship in the show. And that goes a long way and is probably going to elicit some form of a sexual response from an audience,” he says. During filming, he and Edgar-Jones worked with an “intimacy co-ordinator” to create love scenes that felt carnal and heady, but also grounded in reality rather than the eerily disembodied, barely recognisable window-dressing sex of Hollywood.
“There’s a portrayal of sex in the show I think people feel could be attainable in their own lives. You see the clumsiness and you see them talking about consent and using a condom and you see people speaking to a partner they trust about what they want and what they don’t want,” he says. “And those things, when you portray them on screen, can still be as sexy and definitely, in my opinion, more sexy than billowing curtains and flickering candles and all the shit that goes with that.”
He hopes that, particularly for young men, the sex in Normal People can also serve as a kind of counterweight to the warping influence of online porn, which so many people Mescal’s own age have had full access to while growing up. “Totally. Because people figuring out the mechanics of sex in that way isn’t representative of real bodies and real intimacy. It’s not that this is the first healthy portrayal of sex on screen. But it’s definitely a conversation that needs to be had.”
Mescal, like Connell, went to Trinity College Dublin. Before that, like Connell, he was an accomplished Gaelic football player, representing County Kildare at youth level. He relished the brutality of the game. “That was always my favourite part of it. I was never any good at soccer. But I found the physical competition of [Gaelic] football far more gratifying. It’s a game where your desire can impact things more than your skill. I could never do the flashy stuff; I just loved the feeling of knowing that for the next two hours, I didn’t have to worry about anything other than stopping the person in front of me and helping my teammates.”
Then, at the age of 16, Mescal found himself roped into a school production of The Phantom of the Opera and everything changed in an instant. “I’d never felt anything like it. The terror of the first night, the absence of control, the adrenalin and also the kind of joy that goes with it,” he says, talking softly. “And it was also to do with my age. Being 16 is this cripplingly anxious time when you’re so conscious of everything about yourself. You’re conscious that your hands are growing faster than your face, you’re conscious of your nose, you’re conscious that there are all these hormones flying around your body. I found myself constantly insecure. And I know I’m in danger of sounding wanky, but the opportunity to play somebody else and to put my own anxieties aside, I found that really exciting and exhilarating. I become obsessed with that feeling.”
Very quickly, Mescal decided that he wanted to become an actor. “It never felt like a choice between football and drama at that point, because I knew in my heart the thing that excited me more.” His mother and father – a police officer and primary school teacher respectively – were “incredibly supportive”, but he knew that if he was going to make it in a competitive field he would have to apply himself with the same kind of tunnel-visioned rigour that had made him such an effective Gaelic footballer. “The minute I decided I wanted to be an actor, I wanted to work as hard as possible to make it a reality and a success.”
After graduating from Trinity, he began acting in theatre in Ireland. He starred, briefly, in a sausage commercial, but as far as screen credits went, that was about it. Rooney’s book Normal People came out in mid-2018, promptly became a bestseller and, within a few months, Mescal found himself auditioning for the part of Connell. The process of finding the two leads sounds incredibly rigorous. He had to go through scenes with at least 10 different actresses before being paired up with Edgar-Jones. “And I did feel there was something different when Daisy walked in,” he says. “It was nothing dramatic. But when Daisy and I were doing the lines, the characters felt very tangible, very real to me. When we read the scene it didn’t feel like we were ‘acting’, in inverted commas, giving it loads. It felt like two characters talking to each other, as human beings.”
So, with Mescal and Edgar-Jones cast as the leads, production began in the middle of last year. He did not have to dig deep into his own recent experiences of school and uni to find a connection with Connell. “I had my first love experience during school and I had all those anxieties of going to tertiary college and not knowing if I was well-read enough. That whole identity shift that happens between secondary school and college is brutal,” he says. “And I can guarantee that everyone has some form of visceral reaction to thinking back to being 18, 19, 20. I can guarantee it.”
And as much as viewers have, over the past few weeks, become obsessed with the protagonists of Normal People, it is nothing compared with how obsessed Mescal became with Connell. He laughs and shakes his head. “For example, last summer when we were filming, if I was awake for 16 hours a day, then I was probably thinking about Connell for at least 11 or 12 of those hours. That’s weird. That’s not normal! I definitely feel like playing him has infected me in some way, but I’m still not really sure how,” he says. “I think I’m still in too close a proximity to him.”
Perhaps it is this proximity to Connell – a proximity now cemented in the minds of millions – that makes Mescal keen to stress the various differences between them. I tell him that Henry Cavill, the actor who recently played Superman, once told me that being seen as a fantasy sex figure rather than as who you really are can get a bit depressing. Mescal shakes his head and seems to work through the possible implications of this for him. “It’s upsetting to think that might be a reality. That people will be like, ‘Oh, where’s your chain?’ Yeah, that would be weird,” he says, frowning. “The idea that wearing a chain is no longer my own thing, something that Paul does. I hope that people won’t see me and go, ‘Oh, look at him wearing that chain. He thinks he’s Connell.’ ”
So, just to emphasise that he is definitely not Connell, he runs through some particular ways they are different. “I don’t have the kind of aloofness he possesses. I don’t have that kind of stoic silence. But ultimately, those aren’t things I want either,” he says. “I’m happy that I’m able to express my feelings in a healthy way.” In fact, he continues, it bothers him a bit that women seem so attracted to the aloofness and stoic silences. “I get that, in the world of literature and drama, these things can be perceived as sexy. But I guarantee that if you were actually in a relationship with him, he would drive you f..king nuts, y’know?”
Mescal will not say whether he is in a relationship himself. “I think it’s easier not to discuss it, if that’s OK,” he decides after a pause. He says that he and various members of the cast have been doing Zoom quiz nights and that, without wanting to sound too corny, many of his cast mates are now his closest friends. He and Edgar-Jones are now real-life besties. “I think we would have been friends regardless of the show. She’s obviously an astonishing actress, but she’s an even better person. And ultimately, these relationships will outlast the success or failure of the show.”
Mescal says that he’s still “working out what sort of actor I want to be” and that, from his little flat, he’s going through all the various scripts that are now being sent to him, “which is massively exciting”. He says that when all the Normal People episodes were available to stream he went for a long walk on his own and then came home, sat down and watched all six hours’ worth in one sitting, an experience that left him “happy and sad” for seeing all his friends on screen again.
For now, he’s happy just seeing how much people are enjoying the show. “I know that makes it sound as if I’m describing the dream job, but honestly, that’s what it has been for me from the day I auditioned for it,” he says. “I thought the show might be received well and then I could move on to the next one. But the fact that I get to kind of live within the joy of the show for weeks after was not something I was anticipating.” So he’s on his own, but he’s not lonely. Far from it. “Honestly, these have probably been some of the happiest weeks of my life.”
Normal People is streaming on Stan