Paul Mescal’s true strength is not his brawn

The lead role in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II couldn’t have been further away for Paul Mescal seven years ago. At that time, the Irish actor gave up his dream career as a football player after an injury that left him with a broken jaw. In 2024, Mescal has now returned to the big screen in top physical form, after being particularly active in recent years shone in sensitive, fragile male roles.

To better understand where the tragic depth in Paul Mescal’s Lucius performance comes from, it’s worth taking a look at three formative films and series from his past.

Normal People suddenly made Paul Mescal the new shooting star

In the confusing and overwhelming pandemic year of 2020, the internet was at least able to agree on one thing in April: Paul Mescal is giving a contemporary form of masculinity an exciting new face. As Connell, he played the great counterpart to Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Marianne in the series adaptation Normal People of Sally Rooney’s bestseller of the same name.

You can watch a trailer for Normal People here:

The relationship between the introverted student from a wealthy family and the charismatic athlete became unbelievable heartbreaking love story through almost all known interpersonal ups and downs.

Modeled on Rooney’s novel, Mescal played Connell with remarkable sensitivity. Despite his athletic appearance and his outward appearance as an idolized high school darling, the actor revealed layer by layer of repressed insecurity.

This was added sex scenes that are both intimate and realisticwhich may have hit a nerve even more in the first year of coronavirus amid lockdowns and forced isolation. Suddenly, Paul Mescal was the young poster boy for a certain form of masculinity that expressed the open addressing of feelings and insecurities of disorientated twenty-somethings. He should then vary this form of the sensitive young man in exciting ways.

Aftersun and All of Us Strangers underlined Paul Mescal’s special charisma

Last year, the feature film debut Aftersun by Scottish director Charlotte Wells was one of the best works of 2022. Mescal can be seen in it as the young father Calum, who is spending a vacation with his daughter Sophie on the Turkish Riviera.

Watch an Aftersun trailer here:

The highlight of Aftersun is that we only get to know Mescal’s Calum from Sophie’s subjective perspective. Wells looks at him through his daughter’s eyes like a puzzle that is put together piece by piece without ever being complete.

Again, it was Mescal who gave his character a quiet vulnerability that was rarely visible in emotional outbursts in the film. Wells brilliantly captures the feeling of digging through old family photo albums or rewinding videotapes of past vacations to specific moments in order to somehow better understand the people in them who are closest to us.

The image of fragile masculinity constructed in Normal People shaped Mescal into an even more enigmatic, tragic version of it. Every nostalgic scene in Aftersun shines at the same time melancholic painwhich the main character holds captive within himself.

Mescal took up this type of role again in a similarly mysterious way in Andrew Haigh’s disturbing mystery melodrama All of Us Strangers. Here it is Sherlock star Andrew Scott, who, as a lonely screenwriter in London, not only reunites with his parents, who died in a car accident decades ago. Scott’s Adam also finds comfort and closeness through his fresh relationship with his younger neighbor Harry, played by Paul Mescal.

All Of Us Strangers is not only notable for the surreal appearances of Adam’s parents, whom he meets at the same age as himself, a ghostly film. In addition to conversations in which he reflects on his life as a gay man in the present, Harry Adam serves as a mirror for a current, younger generation of queer people.

The star gives his role an unapologetic looseness, which still resonates with the mescal-typical, secretive sadness. When Harry Adam, visibly drunk, asks to be let into his apartment in their first scene together, the actor brings out almost all of his character’s characteristics in just one appearance.

Andrew Haigh saves the big bang between them until the end of All of Us Strangers, that should not be misunderstood as a clumsy twist. Paul Mescal’s acting has shown all along what no one wanted to admit.

Paul Mescal’s sensitive masculinity also shines through in Gladiator 2

The Russell Crowe successor also brings this form of vulnerable, emotional masculinity to the Gladiator sequel. Physically, Mescal appears here as an initial general and later gladiator pumped up and powerful like never before on.

In the battle scenes, which for fans of the first part are likely to be the heart of the sequel, Mescal’s Lucius mutates into a physically shocking fighting machine. If the protagonist initially has to mourn the loss of his wife and later screams out in anger at the certainty of his family’s difficult legacy, all of his previous roles can also be recognized in the Gladiator II protagonist.

In many reviews of the second part, the new main actor is referred to as weaker version of Russell Crowe designated. But Paul Mescal embodies a surprising, very unique action hero in Gladiator II.

Instead of pure muscle power, Lucius often allows himself quiet vulnerability and level-headed thoughtfulness – and the actor behind it also reminds us of the path he took to get to this role.