‘I don’t want to resent the thing I love’: Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor on romance, legalization, and retirement | film

All things considered, telling Paul Mescal that I once bet on him wasn’t the ice-breaker I had hoped for. Or rather, it breaks the ice in an unusual way.

“The main question,” he says, his voice revealing a hint of panic, “is what’s the bet? Who’s most likely to join the 27 club?”

Wow: This is depressing – but funny. Josh O’Connor, who plays Mescal’s lover in the tough new wartime love story History of Sound, certainly thinks so. He sat next to his co-star, overcome with horrified laughter.

It’s true that Mescal was approaching 27 years old when that flutter hit him three years ago. But far from betting that he would meet an untimely end at the same age as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, I’d spend £25 in a flurry of excitement at his surprise Oscar nomination in 2023 for Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun. He played a young father who hides his suicidal depression from his daughter while they vacation together in Türkiye. His performance, like the film, is subtle and deeply mysterious, his overwhelming turmoil hidden beneath an opaque surface.

“Sorry about the £25,” says Mescal, who lost to Brendan Fraser in The Whale. But thank you for your vote of confidence.”

It is an autumn Saturday afternoon, and we are in a hotel room in London. When I walked in a few minutes earlier, the PR assistant guided me toward a seat on the other side of the room, away from the actors. To his credit, O’Connor noticed that my hands were full, jumped to his feet and pulled my chair closer to him and Mescal. Not the last time he gave the impression of being a very good boy.

Mescal is equally friendly but braver. There is a flash of danger about him: a carnivorous sexuality in contrast to O’Connor’s healthier life. Today, Mescal wears a worn-out white shirt, and keeps pushing his sleeves up until you want to say: Yes, yes, great weapons, very impressive, put them away now.

Vaguely bad boy and maybe a good shoe, then. But they could hardly seem more devoted to each other. Their sense of touch and body language are enough to make anyone nearby feel like a gooseberry. At any given moment during our conversation, one of them is usually leaning toward the other, his head tilted attentively; The only way they can get closer is for one of them to jump into the other’s arms. O’Connor will sometimes put his arm around the back of Mescal’s chair while his friend talks, or Mescal will squeeze Connor’s arm or knee reassuringly. The message is clear: We are straight men who have played many gay roles, and yet we are comfortable enough in ourselves not to back away from intimacy.

Right now, Mescal is thinking about Aftersun while O’Connor, who is six years older and wearing a sweatshirt, listens closely. “The Oscars provided the opportunity to celebrate this film in a way that Charlotte and I never expected,” he says of what was, after all, only his second major role since the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which made him a star. “You can’t make something like Aftersun and think: ‘I know where.’ Good We will go in 2023! I doubt this will top it for me, as it’s not the type of film that’s usually recognized as such.

He’s right: Aftersun is almost an anti-Oscars movie. Even his only crying scene is played out in semi-darkness with his back to the camera.

“This movie is quietly perfect,” sighs O’Connor, who has been friends with Mescal since he called him via video in 2020 to congratulate him on “Ordinary People.” “There’s no escalation. We’re all used to offering bait for the prizes.”

“They call it the ‘reel,’” says Mescal, referring to the melodramatic movie clips shown at awards ceremonies. “The Oscars reel.” Jesus.” He seemed somewhat disgusted.

We meet towards the end of 2025, but it’s already clear that there will likely be no Oscars for The History of Sound, despite their sensitive performances. Mescal plays Lionel, a singer raised on a plantation in the American South, who falls in love with David (O’Connor), a cheerful and talented musicologist. After being separated when David went to fight in World War I, they reunited on an expedition through the Maine countryside collecting folk songs and recording them on wax cylinders.

Among their current crop of films, the history of sound is overshadowed in the case of Mescal by Hamnet, in which he plays Shakespeare, and for O’Connor by the farcical “Awake, Dead Man: An Out of Knives Mystery” and the slow-burning heist drama “Mastermind.” However, you can’t win them all, and The History of Sound is a film they’re very proud of. It is also a project that they have both been associated with for four years while searching for funding. “There were times when we thought this might not happen,” O’Connor admits. “But neither of us ever thought about dropping out.”

Mescal came to the set directly after playing the hero in the second part of the movie Gladiator. “I weighed 90 kilograms and had eight weeks to reach 78 kilograms,” he said with a smile. “It was a real head-scratcher. I loved the process of making this film but The History of Sound felt like home to me. It’s where I feel most comfortable. I want to make more films like this versus films the size of Gladiator II.”

The love story between Lionel and David has always been intimate, but the presence of the song (although not a musical) adds an extra dimension. “One of the things I love about this movie is that it tells the story of intimacy in a new way,” O’Connor says. “Apart from my concerns about my voice, singing is a weak business.”

Mescal agrees. “I think the thrill comes from vulnerability,” he says. “It’s like in Irish pubs, it’ll be crowded and then you’ll hear:”Shhh.“And that silence before someone opens their mouth to sing is deafening. You’re afraid to breathe.” Has he ever sung for anyone? “I’ve sung songs for people. But I feel like ‘serenaded’ has a sweet flavour.

Keen to shift the focus away from his personal life, he says: “Josh had two bands!” O’Connor sounds sheepish: “They were called Orange Output and Klang. I wasn’t so much singing as screaming in time.” Orange Output gained notoriety as the band he formed to try to impress Tahliah Barnett, now known as FKA twigs, after they appeared together in a production of Bugsy Malone at their private school in Cheltenham. When the story broke in 2023, she declared she was “extremely grateful.”

More musically confident, Mescal is about to play Paul McCartney in Sam Mendes’ Beatles quartet, due out in 2028. However, those films will be golden oldies in gas station bargain bins by the time another of his current projects hits the screen: Mescal has already been several years making Merrily We Roll Along, an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical that follows three friends from their disillusioned forties into their lives. The perfect twenties. Instead of using aging makeup, director Richard Linklater (who took 12 years to film Boyhood in a similar way) stretched the production over two decades. Put it in your diary for 2040.

Of the two, Mescal is the only one to have songs written about him: word is that he’s the subject of both Sidelines by his ex-girlfriend Phoebe Bridgers, and Normal Thing by his current partner Gracie Abrams. No such luck for O’Connor. “But Paul is writing a song for me.” truly? “Well, I hope so.” Then Mescal starts babbling: “Josh Okon.”UrThe best Boyeeee!“Okay. There’s a lot of emotion going on but no discernible melody. ‘Oh my God, it’s so catchy,'” O’Connor lies.

He has said he wanted to make audio history in part so he could see up close how Mescal does what he does. So – what did he discover? “Well, it’s actually pretty easy,” he joked. “No. Well. There’s something spiritual about what’s going on. When the ‘action’ is called, and you look into your friend’s eyes and see something leave, and something else take its place, it’s a very moving experience. Physically, the form is pee. But emotionally and spiritually, it’s empty. How he does it, damn he knows.”

Mescal has his own compliments at the ready. “There is such a generosity of spirit in Josh as a person. He extends that into a performance, sometimes at the expense of his own well-being. That’s a very generous thing to give people the experience of going to the movies. I can’t say he’s a method actor but that doesn’t mean he won’t take on the cost of the character because he has such compassion for them.”

Is this correct? “Yes,” O’Connor says. “Our friend Jessie Buckley calls actors ‘soul collectors’. We learn something from the characters we play, and they never leave us. You can see that Aftersun has left a mark on my friend here.” The same is true for O’Connor after he played Arthur, the white-suited, crypt-stealing treasure hunter in Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera. “There’s a part of Arthur that I inhabit and that still inhabits me. And there’s a cost to you in doing that. But Paul is right: there’s something generous about being an actor. You’re putting yourself in someone else’s mind, and that’s an empathetic act.”

Mescal then drops a bomb disguised as a side bomb. “I’ve been doing this for five or six years now, and I feel very lucky. But I’m also learning that I don’t think I can keep doing this as much.” Is he talking about legalizing himself? “I think so. I should start doing that. Sure.” This is followed by a warning: “Legalization does not necessarily mean less.” huh? “It means learning that films like History of Sound draw more from the well. You can’t keep going back and expect to constantly deliver something you’re proud of. I don’t know what this rationing looks like. I miss being on stage, so I may only have a time when I’m doing theater for a few years. I also have different priorities in my personal life that I want to take care of.”

There must be mental health issues to consider as well. I can’t help but think of the troubled David in The History of Sound, who talks about the “false chord” that he feels is chiming inside him. Or Callum, the young father who is trapped and collapsed in the aftersun. They belong to a type of men unable to articulate or resolve what afflicts them, while the actors themselves seem remarkably unafflicted. What is their secret?

“I don’t know the answer,” O’Connor says. “To be in your life, with your family, to have privacy. It should be in your life. The care that we both give to taking care of these personalities — well, if we faced half that problem in our own lives…” Mescal continues the thought: “We would be therapists.”

O’Connor likes the idea of ​​legalization. “I’ll take some time off too,” he decided. How do we balance that with the need to stay visible and modern? Get off the train and it will continue speeding without you. “That’s the big fear,” Mescal says. “But what’s the alternative? I don’t want to resent the thing I love. It sounds bold, but I’d rather not be on the train if that’s the option.”

“The nightmare is dissatisfaction with work,” O’Connor says. “Also, the more we see of an actor, the harder it is for that actor to hide from your eyes and convince you that he or she is someone else.”

Mescal stares down a multi-month awards season campaign for Hamnet. “Once I’m done promoting it, hopefully no one will get to see me until 2028 when I perform as The Beatles. People will get a break from me and I’ll get a break from them.”

He could always keep a low profile until Merrily We Roll Along opens in 15 years or so.

“Can you imagine?” He says, his eyes lighting up.

O’Connor films the scene around the early 2040s: “People will ask, ‘Why didn’t they cast this divorced person in this movie?’ “Do you remember when he talked about legalization – and then no one saw him again?”