The Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott show: ‘I think people are excited by the sex scenes’

About a year and a half ago, I met Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell at the Excelsior Hotel in Venice. They were perhaps only partially aware that they were launching a double act that was to run for another six months. Award season really does last that long, and they were adjusting the banter right until the Oscar ceremony, in March.

I sense Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott wondering where I am going with this. I have already laid the groundwork. The day before our interview I met them on the red carpet for a gala screening in Dublin of Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers and began the strained analogy.

“What double act?” Mescal said then, laughing.

There is no getting away from it. The Mescal’n’Scott show really does play like a sequel to last year’s travelling entertainment. The dynamics have shifted down a generation. Now 47, Scott is (perhaps surprisingly) the same age as Farrell. The generational difference in both cases is about 20 years. So, despite his crisp looks, Scott now takes over from Gleeson as the senior figure. Mescal is the whippersnapper. And they’re good at it. If this is a sequel, it is more Godfather Part II than Speed 2: Cruise Control. They banter on the carpet. Here they are playing “how well they know each other” for a Vanity Fair video. Here they are taking the “Co-Star Test” for BuzzFeed. They were on Graham Norton. They did The Late Late Show. Now they are here for me in the Merrion Hotel.

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Nobody trains you for this. Mescal, who properly broke through during lockdown with Normal People, explains that it still feels fairly new to him. He did press for Normal People with Daisy Edgar-Jones. Then, on the way to an Oscar nomination, he traded banter with juvenile support Frankie Corio for Aftersun. The Hollywood actors’ strike kept him away from press for his role opposite Saoirse Ronan on Garth Davis’s Foe.

“I haven’t actually done a huge amount of press campaigns,” he says. “The first press campaign I did was with Daisy. And that was all on Zoom. With Aftersun, I was doing a play at the time. And a lot of that was with Frankie, who is a child. With Andrew, it’s like appearing with a friend. I feel like actors give out a lot about doing press. There are parts that can be tedious. But this has been one we could promote for another six months. Until people get sick of the sight of us!”

It helps that they are talking about a film almost everyone seems to like. All of Us Strangers, derived from a Japanese novel by Taichi Yamada, and nominated for six Baftas, casts Scott as Adam, a London-based writer, who hooks up with Harry, Mescal’s boozy character, while struggling over an apparently autobiographical screenplay. Adam travels to the outskirts of London, where, in a beautifully ambiguous strain, he meets Claire Foy and Jamie Bell as – apparently unchanged – his late parents, killed in a car crash decades earlier. You can see them as ghosts. I saw them as representations of Adam’s efforts to plunder his own early life for the work.

“I’m more in line with what you’re saying,” says Haigh, director of the acclaimed Weekend and 45 Years. “To me, as a writer, it is about experiencing the past and bringing these things back to life again. That’s what you do as a writer.”

So how did the Mescal’n’Scott show come together? Adam was raised in Ireland after his parents died. Harry is from somewhere in the north of England. Was it an accident that he cast two Irish actors?

“It was a combination,” says Haigh. “I love those actors. So I wanted Andrew to be in this story. Paul is obviously Irish, but he’s not playing Irish in this. Half my family’s Irish. My partner is from Northern Ireland. I have a big connection to Ireland. There’s something about Irishness I am drawn to. So it sort of makes sense.”

At any rate, the partnership gives us the opportunity to compare the differing techniques and origins of the two actors. That will tell us something about how the nation and the industry have changed. (We tried something similar when talking to the Brendan’n’Colin show.)

Both men have been busy throughout their careers, but fame came to them in very different ways. Scott, a Dubliner, was born in 1976 and attended Gonzaga College in Ranelagh. He took classes at the Young People’s Theatre in Rathfarnham. He first appeared on screen as a teenager in Cathal Black’s Korea, way back in 1995. He went on to Trinity College Dublin, but, as he told this newspaper in 2015, his first exam coincided with his opening night in John Crowley’s production of Six Characters in Search of an Author at the Abbey. He was made for the theatre. Those sharp looks. That rich voice. By 1999 he was living in London and appearing opposite Michael Gambon in the TV series Longitude. To use the language of Flann O’Brien’s Catechism of Cliché, what did he never do from that point? Look back. He never looked back. He was in plays, TV, films.

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For all that, the kind of front-page fame Mescal achieved almost overnight did not come Scott’s way until he was in his mid-30s. He appeared as Jim Moriarty in Sherlock 14 years ago. In 2015 he played C in Spectre. His “sexy priest” for the BBC comedy Fleabag cemented meme-friendly fame in 2019.

Does he like how that went? Actors whose careers go ballistic a decade or more after they began sometimes wonder if they were lucky not be properly famous earlier. They may have spun off the rails. Think of all those who went up like a rocket and down like a stick.

“What I can say is that I’m really grateful I was able to do all the stuff that I did without too much scrutiny,” says Scott. “But that’s not necessarily because I was young. It was more because I wasn’t as comfortable with myself as I could be. You can be 20 years old and be completely comfortable with yourself. And you can be 50 years old and uncomfortable with yourself. That’s more important than the age issue.”

He always seems impressively relaxed before the press. Just look how he has been starting conversations this season. His jaunty plea that the phrase “openly gay” should be retired generated debate. His story about stopping his performance as Hamlet – during the “to be or not to be” soliloquy, no less – because someone in the audience was using a laptop made him a hero among all decent people. I’d say he handles attention well.

“I have a real caution towards it,” he says. “We were just talking about what you value as an actor. The idea of too much screaming I find frightening. That’s the thing that I just want to protect.”

“If you’re not able to live your life then it has to affect your work,” Mescal adds.

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The two men started in very different environments. The freshly minted Scott got a few roles in Irish films – in Korea as a kid, in Robert Quinn’s Dead Bodies at the start of the new century – but the domestic industry was not then what it would be by the time Mescal kicked off. One can scarcely imagine a Normal People in the late 1990s. You didn’t have Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan, Jessie Buckley, Cillian Murphy, Barry Keoghan and all the others bossing the red carpet.

“It was sort of emerging,” says Scott of the Irish film business. “It was the 1990s. The tax incentive had come in. So there was a huge amount of films being made – not necessarily all Irish. I think that one of the reasons why there’s such a resurgence, internationally, is because, before, when you put yourself on tape, you had to actually put yourself on tape. You’d buy a f***ing Jiffy bag, put the tape in it, and post it.”

His point is that all actors now have the technology available to tape themselves and pass the video on at the touch of a key.

“I think the location of the actor is much less relevant. For everybody. Whether they’re from Santa Monica or from Sandymount,” he says.

In contrast, Mescal struck fast and early. He was raised in Co Kildare – his dad a schoolteacher, his mother a garda – and he excelled at Gaelic football, before making for the Lir Academy of Dramatic Art at Trinity College Dublin. He had already had a few decent roles before he landed the lead in the adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People that defined the Covid summer. He played the title character in the Gate’s innovative take on The Great Gatsby. He was in Rough Magic’s productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Still the attention that came his way after Normal People must have been unnerving.

Much of this chatter was on social media. When I talked to him in late 2022, he explained that, a civilised user of the social apps to this point, he soon found it necessary to call a personal moratorium. He had noted that roles were “being cast depending on social media followings”. Mescal felt it wise to get off the social before it took him over.

“It affects people in the sense that there’s less grey area to be able to make mistakes as a human being,” says Mescal. “There are less mistakes that allow you to grow. Because everything can be documented – and not just through word of mouth or stories. It’s literally ‘I saw Paul and Andrew drunk at a bar last night. Look at this video in high definition, 4K!’”

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Yup. There was, indeed, a minor social kerfuffle last October when photos emerged of Scott and Mescal “taking shots at LaLupe in Valladolid, Spain” (to quote Yahoo! News). They seemed to be minding their own business. Nothing much to see there. But seen they were.

“You have to make a choice as an actor,” says Mescal. “I say this to young actors encountering fame. Do you make a decision to isolate yourself and present an idea of yourself that is palatable to an audience or to people who are taking videos or in a public sphere? Or do you go, ‘Look, I have every intention of conducting myself well, but I’m not going to try to present myself as a role model who is clean for the sake of being clean’? I’m becoming more comfortable with the idea. I have every intention of trying to live my life with the notion that people aren’t interested in it.”

Let’s work from that premise? Let’s make that assumption?

“Yeah, let’s make that assumption,” he agrees. “That’s the way I want to conduct myself. As a result, hopefully, it’ll allow me to have access to parts that I want to play because I’m not up in some ivory tower. Yeah. It’s so easy to do that. It can be quite frightening. You feel the easiest thing to do would be to isolate yourself – to protect some sort of image. I think that would be detrimental to work and would also just be very boring.”

They are an interesting couple. Both talky. Both funny. But they are very different actors. Mescal is more demonstrative, rawer. One can see why he was cast as Stanley Kowalski in that acclaimed production of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Almeida Theatre in London. Scott is more contained, more focused on the language. You can see why he was cast as Hamlet at the same theatre. Those contrasting energies suit the roles in All of Us Strangers perfectly.

“Yeah, definitely,” says Haigh. “It feels more interior with Andrew. When you cast you cannot forget all of the roles that they’ve done before. They become part of your narrative.”

The film also offers a gloss on one aspect of Scott’s journey. In a film that switches from parents stranded in a distant decade to two men in the current confused times, an argument is tentatively made that life has got better for gay people. What does Andrew, a gay man who lived through those changes, think about that? His witty tirade about the “openly gay” cliche seemed premised on accepting an improvement in attitudes.

“Oh, there’s just no doubt in my mind about that,” he says. “The war is never over. I’ve never said that people aren’t still struggling. But we were at the Light House cinema last night hearing that a relationship like this on screen is actually going to sell tickets rather than the opposite. People embrace that and they are proud of it. That’s just undeniable. I feel so privileged that, in my lifetime, that’s literally happened to me, legally speaking. I always say that the 2015 referendum was one of the happiest days of my life.”

Mescal asks if he was here for that plebiscite on marriage equality.

“Yeah, I came over to do some campaigning. I was handing out a few leaflets. It was extraordinary. I went into Dublin Castle. And, actually, last night was incredibly significant.”

He feels the gala screening of All of Us Strangers at the Light House made a statement?

“The feeling of support and love. The personal nature of the film. It just showed how much Ireland has changed. The fact that I was able to experience it all with Paul. It was magical really. My family were there. Just amazing.”

And yet ...

“Here he goes. That didn’t last long,” says Scott, laughing, in anticipation of my bringing down the mood.

And yet ... does the gossip around the (reasonably) explicit sex scenes indicate that we haven’t entirely grown up? Nobody much commented when Mescal and Ronan got together in Foe. That seemed to be just what the world expects from movies for adults.

“I think it’s difficult to equate the two things, because the critical responses both films got was quite different,” says Mescal.

That is fair. Foe just didn’t attract the same attention that has come the way of All of Us Strangers. But the blue-rinse media is still keener to clench up at gay sex than the straight equivalent. No?

“I think people are excited by the sex scenes as well,” says Scott. “Sex is physical communication as opposed to verbal communication. The reason that people are responding to them is there’s a story within the physicality. I think that’s what people respond to. I do think that there can be sort of prurience about different forms of sexuality outside heterosexuality. But actually, having said that, I think there’s a little bit of that about all forms of sexuality. Many of us contain multitudes: I’m this and I’m that.”

I am reminded of something Haigh said when we were chatting about the – now occasionally controversial – business of casting straight actors in gay roles. He was relaxed about awarding Mescal the role of Harry.

“I think if you ask Paul about this ... I’m not putting words into his mouth, but I think a lot of younger people don’t use the same terms about sexuality that we do. Which is always fascinating. Less dogmatic.”

Mescal doesn’t entirely disagree.

“I was talking to my dad about this,” he says. “Labels were hugely important when he was growing up. I think people of my generation are much more fluid in terms of the labels they proscribe themselves. There’s less ‘I’m straight ... I’m gay.’ To be the generation that I am, but also to be a younger actor, to be a human being in the world, labels are becoming less important. That’s a privilege. I think that’s what Andrew Haigh was getting at.”

The great Mescal’n’Scott tour still has a bit to run. Mescal is up for best supporting actor at the Baftas on February 18th. Scott is nominated for best actor at the Independent Spirits on February 25th. Sadly, the film did not secure any Oscar nominations this week – Scott seemed a decent bet in best actor – but nobody can fault them for effort.

Then we get to see them doing real work again. Scott plays Patricia Highsmith’s amoral Tom Ripley in an adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley for Netflix. Mescal is at the head of Ridley Scott’s sequel to Gladiator. How was it working on something that huge?

“It’s the same job!” he says, relieved. “I remember coming back one day and thinking, thank f**k: it’s the same job!”

All of Us Strangers is in cinemas now