Last week, at the Los Angeles premiere of Gladiator II, Paul Mescal adroitly negotiated a situation that, with a less subtle operator, might have generated months of absurd anguish. Marc Malkin, Variety’s exhaustingly positive red-carpet reporter, was there to hear how wonderful everything and everybody had been. This is not the forum to ask an upcoming star about her rumoured drug bust.
Malkin seemed to have no idea that he was treading in potentially controversial waters when he began by asking Mescal, “What was it like meeting the king? Had you met him before?” Yes, of course, this shouldn’t be a huge issue. It isn’t a huge issue. But certain warning lights do faintly sound. This is not quite the same as asking the question of Denzel Washington. “King of where?” a less polite star might have replied.
In recent years, Ireland’s media outlets, both social and mainstream, have competed with old-school Kremlinologists – once reading much into who stood where on the May Day balcony – for fanaticism as they parse any interaction between Irish celebrity and British royal. Mescal’s response was a masterpiece of balance.
He began by acknowledging that meeting the king of England at the earlier British premiere was not nothing. Just as it would have been other than nothing to meet Taylor Swift or Sonic the Hedgehog (my words, not his). “I mean it’s definitely not something that I thought was on the bingo cards,” he said. The bingo-card analogy recognises some event that would not hitherto have seemed likely. Whether it is desirable is not addressed.
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Mescal followed up with, “I’m Irish, so it’s not on the list of priorities.” This needed to be said. In an earlier interaction with Variety – Mescal really worked his butt off for Gladiator – he addressed the British media’s habit of claiming Irish actors for their own. There are plenty from outside the country who might have read this as a conversation about his own king. You can’t legislate for ignorance.
Our greatest living diplomat then acknowledged there are others who, quite reasonably, may have meeting King Charles on their “list of priorities”. Sir Ridley Scott GBE, director of Gladiator, for one. “It’s an amazing thing for Ridley, because I know how important that is for him,” Mescal continued. Nicely done. The situation has been clarified. Other sensibilities are tolerated. There is no dig there at Scott’s own patriotic leanings (though I’ve seen some on social media desperately pretending otherwise).
Unfortunately, Malkin didn’t seem to get the hint and went on to ask Mescal what he and the king talked about. The actor had, however, made his points. The Kremlinologists had little to fret over.
That is quite an achievement. Hobbyists really do spend more time than is sane analysing how Irish stars set their shoulders when standing near king, queen or prince. Mescal was already a subject of this lunacy on the Gladiator marathon. Waiting to meet Charles after that British premiere, he was snapped wearing an utterly neutral expression while glancing vaguely in the monarch’s direction; “forcing irish people to meet the royal family is so foul look at paul’s face,” someone posted on X.
Hundreds of equally silly comments followed. Something similar happened when Cillian Murphy looked blankly towards Prince Harry at the red carpet for Dunkirk, in 2017. The image (showing nothing whatsoever of interest) has been recycled repeatedly over the past six years. The most bizarre oft-memed snap shows Niall Horan looking mildly distracted while waiting for the late Queen Elizabeth at the Royal Variety Show in 2012. That will show her.
[ Call Saoirse Ronan British. Go on. . . Please. . . Pretty please!Opens in new window ]
Here we have an example of the indestructible Kuleshov effect. This describes the experiment in which, a century ago, the Russian film-maker Lev Kuleshov intercut shots of a bowl of soup, a girl in a coffin and a young woman on a couch with the expressionless face of the actor Ivan Mosjoukine. Audiences reported that the actor looked, respectively, hungry, bereaved or lascivious. Intercut him with Princess Anne and half the Irish nation would argue he seemed violently rebellious.
Oh well. There have been (and still are) more dangerous causes of tension between the UK and Ireland than these largely imaginary acts of defiance. No, Ronan O’Gara didn’t keep his hands in his pockets and refuse to shake the queen’s hand in 2009. “I was cleaning my hands from sweat to make sure there wasn’t a layer of sweat before I shook her hand,” he later wearily explained. Mescal’s patient reply may go some way to dampening down this exhausting conversation. Nothing he said could offend. Right?
Hang on. What’s this in Tuesday’s Daily Express?
“Gladiator II star Paul Mescal makes six-word dig at King Charles.”
Well, he did his best.
