When Hollywood is poised to turn you into the most marketable actor on the planet, it’s very unwise to have a photograph of yourself published in mass-circulation newspapers above stories describing you ‘sniffing a suspicious substance from a key during a wild weekend at Glastonbury’.
But Paul Mescal, whose swords ‘n’ sandals movie Gladiator II is set to make him an international action-adventure star, apparently didn’t seem to care.
The Irish actor had been caught on video dipping a key into a plastic bag to scoop the powder-like material to his nostril while dancing to the American band The National’s late-night set.
Yet despite fears he may damage box office takings by earning a suspect reputation, it’s a sign of the film industry’s infatuation with the 28-year-old that this seems to have been swiftly forgiven.
‘Gladiator II is going to take Mescal into the stratosphere,’ says a senior Los Angeles studio executive. He described as ‘terrific’ the sequel to the Russell Crowe classic about a former Roman general exacting vengeance against the corrupt emperor who murdered his family and sent him into slavery.
Coming 24 years after the original Gladiator propelled Crowe to a glittering billing – not to mention a best actor Oscar – early screenings of the sequel have earned rave reviews.
‘It is better than anyone could have hoped for, and its reception has been 100 per cent positive,’ the executive added.
The film’s hotly anticipated trailer, released last week and already garnering a record 180million views, shows the Colosseum in Rome flooded to stage a naval battle between gladiators and slaves as sharks circle beneath. In another, Mescal’s character faces a charging rhino.
It is a striking contrast from his breakthrough role playing a pasty-faced, indecisive lover opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones in the BBC’s Normal People. His character Lucius is a bronzed, battle-hardened warrior with breast plate and rippling muscles.
Lucius is the nephew of Roman Emperor Commodus, seen in the original movie as a child. Sent for his own protection to North Africa, he finds himself dragged back to Rome as a gladiator.
‘Russell Crowe is a hard act to follow, but Paul more than fills his shoes,’ says the studio executive. ‘He’s a revelation in this film. Most people in Hollywood thought of him as a romantic lead, slightly effete, but this performance turns him into a bona fide action hero who can carry a blockbuster.’
Mescal dominates the screen, despite sharing it with heavyweight co-stars including Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal and Derek Jacobi, says the executive.
‘He’s mesmerising. Men will love his character and so will women. He’s pumped up and macho but his Normal People sensitivity comes to the surface in the emotional scenes.’
A source who worked on Gladiator II, which returned to Malta where the first film was mostly shot, said crew members were ‘blown away’ by his physicality.
Despite having stunt doubles on set, ‘Paul insisted on doing the fight scenes himself, even when we were filming underwater,’ added the source.
‘In other scenes there were pyrotechnic explosions going off everywhere and he was in the middle of it all.’
‘I just wanted to be big and strong and look like somebody who can cause a bit of damage when the s*** hits the fan,’ Mescal told Vanity Fair of the weight-training he did to prepare for the role, insisting that he was not trying to become a sex symbol.
‘One could, in striving for that perfect look, end up looking more like an underwear model than a warrior.’
The film opens in cinemas in November – the same time as the movie musical Wicked opens, inviting comparisons with last year’s ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon when Barbie and Oppenheimer went head-to-head and proved a huge double hit for the industry.
Portmanteaus are already circulating for November’s dual billing, including the less than catchy ‘Wickiator’, or ‘Glicked’ as Mescal himself has suggested.
‘The first Gladiator took $500 million at the box office,’ says the source on set, ‘and everyone thinks this one should do double that.’
For Mescal, Gladiator II could be life-changing. ‘He’s being sent every hot script in Hollywood,’ says one executive. ‘Everything from Marvel franchises to the script of the new Bee Gees biopic – offering him the chance to play whichever one he wants.’
He is understood to have been house-hunting in the Hollywood Hills, though determined to keep the UK as his base.
‘The least amount of time that I can spend there, the better for my soul,’ the actor said of Tinseltown recently – a view he may be forced to reconsider.
Yet he already finds himself part of a Hollywood power couple, romantically linked with American singer Gracie Abrams, 24, who was one of the opening acts on singer Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. The couple dined recently at Brat, a Michelin-starred restaurant in London’s Shoreditch.
Gracie’s father, J. J. Abrams, who directed films in the Star Wars, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible franchises, could prove a valuable ally. But the County Kildare-born actor has been quick to earn a reputation as a heartbreaker.
He’s attracted the interest of newly single divorcee Natalie Portman, and Ayo Edebiri from the TV show The Bear. Both have been seen cosying up to him in recent months. n actress Sophie Wilde was also with Mescal at the Bafta awards in February.
He has previously dated singer Phoebe Bridgers and was spotted sharing a coffee with Angelina Jolie in London last year.
He longs to correct all the gossip, but admits: ‘I don’t think that’s a very wise thing to do. But the temptation still exists, to be like, ‘Shut the f*** up. This is my life. This is what’s going on. Or this is what’s not going on.’ ‘
Mescal is well aware of the inner demons that drive him: childhood financial anxieties, pubescent inadequacy, an actor’s insecurity, his mother’s bone marrow cancer battle – she was diagnosed in 2022 with multiple myeloma – and an addiction to cigarettes.
‘I’ve been able to give up smoking for periods of time. But I’m always looking for an excuse to start again,’ he admits.
It’s been a whirlwind rise for the lad from Maynooth, County Kildare, the eldest of three children whose father was a teacher/semi-professional actor and his mother a police officer.
‘I remember growing up being anxious about the financial state of my family,’ he has confessed. Nor was he a teen heart- throb at school. ‘You’re going through puberty, spotty,’ he recalls. ‘I felt my hands were too big for my body.’
He played Gaelic football until a jaw injury ended pro ambitions, and he made his stage debut at 16 playing the lead in a school adaptation of The Phantom Of The Opera. The role gave him the acting bug and he studied drama at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 2017.
The London stage followed, but Mescal had his television breakthrough in 2020 in Normal People, winning the Bafta best actor award. He launched into movies in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s 2021 The Lost Daughter, and the following year had two films debut at the Cannes Film Festival – God’s Creatures and Aftersun.
He loathes social media and the way Hollywood casting directors increasingly assign roles based on an actor’s online following.
‘That sent shivers up my spine,’ he’s said. ‘I don’t think that’s true of the projects that I’ve done, but I don’t like that trajectory.’
Indeed, he deleted his Instagram account with its 250,000 followers last year, turning it into a private account for friends only.
Mescal’s greatest asset is not his looks but his emotional vulnerability. Remarkably, director Ridley Scott offered him the lead role in Gladiator II after only a 25-minute chat, without a screen test or audition.
Scott, 86, recalled watching Normal People – ‘not really my kind of TV show,’ he admits – and being captivated by Mescal’s presence, exclaiming ‘who’s this guy?’. They spent just 15 minutes talking about the film, and another ten discussing Gaelic football.
‘He was a special find… absolutely perfect,’ the director told Vanity Fair. In January, Mescal was downbeat on the intense fame that the film will bring. ‘Is it just that more people will stop you in the street? I’d get profoundly depressed if that’s so.’
But spending life roped off from view in VIP lounges isn’t for him. He would ‘just get too bored’ he said, adding he didn’t want to stop ‘going out or meeting someone in a bar or getting drunk at a party’. His Glastonbury episode will not have troubled Scott, who has worked with many hellraisers, not least Richard Harris and Oliver Reed, both stars of Gladiator.
Indeed the success of Gladiator II will lie in how audiences answer the question once shouted by Russell Crowe’s gladiator after dispatching a rival in a blood-soaked arena: ‘Are you not entertained?’