Paul Mescal, whose filmography includes three of the most devastating performances ever put to film, says his new movie, The History of Sound with Josh O’Connor, is the saddest thing he’s ever made.
In an interview with Variety to promote his first major blockbuster lead role in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, the Irish actor confessed that, out of all the scripts he’s read in his still short but incredibly well-curated career, the upcoming gay romance film by Oliver Hermanus (Living, Beauty) “broke his heart the most.”
That is a bold statement to make for an actor whose breakout role came in the adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, also known as one of the most heart-wrenching love stories to grace television screens in the last decade. Even bolder when you consider he received his first Oscar nomination in 2023 for playing a suicidal young father in Charlotte Wells’ beautiful time-capsule directorial debut, Aftersun. He then followed that little happy pill with his third most acclaimed performance in Andrew Haigh’s queer ghost story, All of Us Strangers, as fellow Irishman Andrew Scott’s ambiguous, melancholic neighbor-turned-boyfriend. We’re genuinely concerned about what to expect from The History of Sound now, if Mescal’s comments mean it will out-sad his frankly unbeatable streak of somber.
The actor himself is aware of his “sad boy” reputation and has expressed his fear of being typecast as a tortured soul in the past. “I do want to expand my range in terms of genre, and scale of film. I have this perpetual fear that if I keep making films like this, people will get bored of me and they’ll think I’m just perpetually sad,” he told Awards Watch in 2023. The projects he has in the pipeline won’t do much in the way of changing this perception, but the one he has coming to theaters this November might.
Mescal’s turn as the son of Russel Crowe’s Maximus, Lucius Verus, in Scott’s return to the arenas of the Roman Empire has been labeled “compelling” and “magnetic as always” in early reviews for the film. Still, it seems his swordplay and bravado did not leave critics or audiences feeling nearly as breathless as they did over the earnestness and emotional vulnerability of past roles. Not for long, however, seeing as the next year or so will see Mescal lead the foreseeably gloomy The History of Sound and Hamnet — both currently in post-production.
In The History of Sound, Mescal and O’Connor (who’s been having an equally exciting ascension into the Hollywood A-list over the last couple of years) play lovers in rural New England during the First World War, who join forces to compile “the lives, voices, and music of their American countrymen,” per the film’s IMDb page. In a recent Vanity Fair cover issue, O’Connor described it as a film about “grief, companionship, and music,” as well “as what happens in life when you fall in love with someone, and maybe that connection is broken.”
The 28-year-old actor is so invested in becoming the ultimate king of Pathos that he decided to become an executive producer in the film, telling Variety he plans to launch his own “super small and writer-led” production company one day. Asked whether he’d be primarily looking for films that “emotionally devastating and full of latent trauma,” Mescal replied “Oh yeah, that’s definitely the territory!”
Hamnet we know less about, but considering it will center William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway’s lives after the death of their titular 11-year-old son, we’re not exactly expecting unicorns and rainbows. Mescal stars as the great English playwright and reunites with The Lost Daughter‘s Jessie Buckley in the role of his wife.
Neither have a release date just yet, but both are expected to arrive next year. Mescal might have taken a break from making us cry in 2024, choosing to make us sweat instead, but it sounds like the balance will be restored in 2025 and onwards as he continues to build his legacy as one of the greatest dramatic performers of his generation.
Published: Nov 14, 2024 02:01 pm