Paul Mescal's star has risen bright and hot the past few years, following his BAFTA-winning breakout role as Connell Waldron one of Hulu's best series Normal People. Since then, the Irish actor has become a Hollywood regular with acclaimed turns in the father-daughter drama Aftersun (for which he scored his first Oscar nomination), the A Streetcar Named Desire stage revival, which reportedly helped him land his role in the historical action flick Gladiator 2, and, most recently, as Andrew Scott's love interest in the impactful 2023 film All of Us Strangers. However, as Gladiator 2's release approaches, the actor is getting real about becoming more famous.
While those performances have earned Mescal a good degree of career notoriety —not to mention social standing as an "Internet boyfriend"— the actor is worried that landing the lead in Gladiator 2 will pump up his popularity to a degree that he would be uncomfortable with. While opening up about his film on the 2024 movie schedule, Mescal recently revealed in a January 2024 interview with The Times UK:
I don’t know what the difference will be. Maybe that’s naive? Is it just that more people will stop you in the street? I’d get profoundly depressed if that’s so and hope it isn’t true. I’ll have an answer next year, but if [the film] impacts my life in that way, I’ll be in a bad spot. I’d have to move on and do an obtuse play nobody wants to see.
In the Ridley Scott-directed follow-up to the 2000 Russell Crowe-led epic, Mescal is set to play Lucius Verus, the now-grown son of Lucilla (portrayed both in the original and its sequel by Danish actress Connie Nielson) and the nephew of the slain Emperor Commodus, famously played by Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix in the early-aughts drama.
Scott gave some insight into Mescal's character, recently revealing to Rotten Tomatoes:
[Lucius] has been out in the wilderness for.. let’s see, we last saw him when he was 12. It’s about 12, 15 years later, he’s been out in the wilderness having lost touch with his mother. His mother lost touch with him. She doesn’t know where he is. She thinks he might be dead.
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Given that the sequel also features such high-profile performers as cinematic icon Denzel Washington and The Last of Us leading man Pedro Pascal, there will certainly be a lot of hoopla around The Gladiator 2, so Mescal's concerns are understandable. A big-budget action film will undoubtedly include a lengthy, strenuous promo tour, with a lot of publicity aimed at the film's star.
However, while things like talk-show bookings, red-carpet appearances and social-media fame have all become woven into the web of showbusiness, the actor says he wants the emphasis put on performance, not popularity:
What are we doing this for? It scares me greatly. Acting should never be reduced to numbers of Instagram followers...Over the last few years people have been talking about films and TV shows as content. That’s a filthy word. It’s not ‘content’, it’s fucking work. I’m not being snobby, but there are two concurrent industries. One that works with a lack of care and artistic integrity. Go nuts, make stuff with Instagram followers as a factor, whatever … But the other is what’s always been there, the craft of film-making, directing, lighting and production design. That keeps artists alive. And audiences want to be challenged.
If it's advice that he needs, maybe Mescal can reach out to someone who has already walked in those Roman sandals: Gladiator's original star Russell Crowe. He told Esquire UK last year that while he had not yet reached out to the Australian actor, he would "love to hear his stories" from his own experience making that epic.
I don’t know what we would talk about. Like, I’d love to hear his stories from filming, but the character is, like, totally separate.
Gladiator 2 is set to arrive on November 22, which should give Mescal more than enough time to phone Crowe and get all of the guidance needed to withstand the media blitz that will soon surround him. While this film will likely make him more famous, it seems like Mescal is aware of the challenge ahead, and he wants to focus on the film and give fans a fabulous movie.
