Oscars 2023: Paul Mescal’s stardom, from Normal People to Aftersun

Paul Mescal arrives at the 25th British Independent Film Awards on December 4, 2022. Photo / Getty Images

Best actor at the Oscars this year was always going to be a battle of the titans. For weeks, nominations had been widely predicted for Austin Butler, Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser and Bill Nighy, whose performances over the past 12 months, from pop-icon reincarnation to transformative comeback, had the usual awards season requirements well covered.

Before today’s Academy press conference, just one question remained. Who on earth was going to get the fifth slot? Tom Cruise, Hugh Jackman, or perhaps Tom Hanks – all well-liked veterans with eligible work in the mix?

Not quite. Instead, it was taken from out of the blue by a 26-year-old BBC Three graduate most of us hadn’t even heard of until three years ago, but who has since vaulted – via just two further screen roles, one film and one series – to the very top of the pyramid.

Ladies and gentlemen, your fifth best actor contender is Paul Mescal.

Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio attend the "Aftersun" Opening Gala at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Photo / Getty Images

And, I should add, rightly so. The Mescal nomination was no bizarre twist, like Andrea Riseborough’s shock appearance in the Best Actress category, which (fine as her performance is) came about as the result of a frenzied 11th hour campaigning push. Rather, he got there the organic, low-intervention way: by being brilliant in a film which quietly but insistently nudged itself onto voters’ to-watch lists over the course of the last eight months.

That film, if you haven’t yet had the considerable pleasure, is Aftersun: the debut feature from the 35-year-old Scot Charlotte Wells, and a witty and tender depiction of a father-daughter holiday at a Turkish beach resort in the late 1990s.

Like Andrea Arnold’s Red Road, or Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher, it’s the sort of deeply felt, handcrafted wonder on which great independent cinema careers are often built. It’s also exactly the sort of film you keep a million miles away from if you want Hollywood to notice you quick.

Aftersun first screened at Cannes last May, where I caught it at its mid-afternoon premiere in a hotel basement: Mescal loped onstage to introduce it with his then-12-year-old co-star, Frankie Corio, and the twosome’s endearingly shambolic back-and-forth hardly screamed Academy Awards Campaign: Step One.

But then Mescal’s career – all six years of it – has never resembled a masterplan. After two years of stage roles in Dublin (he grew up in County Kildare, Ireland), he was cast alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones as Connell in the BBC’s 2020 adaptation of Normal People, Sally Rooney’s delicate millennial romance. Like Aftersun, the miniseries was low-key. But when it was broadcast in April 2020, its frankness and intimacy – let’s be honest, its sex scenes – scratched all kinds of lockdown-stoked itches, and overnight, Mescal became a hot young talent to watch.

Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar Jones in Normal People. Photo / Supplied

Another miniseries came next: an Irish psychological thriller called The Deceived, broadcast later that year on Channel 5. Shot before Normal People first screened, it featured Mescal in the relatively minor role of a local builder – though when it was released on DVD, he could naturally be found in the middle of the box, as an enticement to his swelling army of fans.

He was an idle temptation in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, too, as a beach bar employee who idly flirts with Olivia Colman’s holidaying academic. The role wasn’t complex, but it capitalised on Mescal’s particular charm – an easygoing magnetism which nevertheless hints at woundedness and weakness – and suggested a bigger showcase was imminent.

Dakota Johnson and Olivia Coleman in The Lost Daughter on Netflix.

Aftersun was it. Carried by rave reviews from Cannes, it toured the festival circuit before opening in UK cinemas last November, taking £1.3 million (NZ$2.46 million) – an enormous sum for a film of its scale – before transferring to the streaming platform MUBI, which is presumably turning somersaults at this afternoon’s news.

So will London’s Almeida Theatre, where Mescal is currently starring as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. That role was of course immortalised first on stage and then on screen by Marlon Brando, and it brought him his first Oscar nomination in 1952.

Mescal has two further unreleased independent films, God’s Creatures and Carmen, ready to go, but some significantly heftier projects lie just ahead. He’s said to be Ridley Scott’s first pick to star in the forthcoming Gladiator sequel, will appear opposite Saoirse Ronan in Amazon’s sci-fi thriller Foe, and with Andrew Scott, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy in the British fantasy drama Strangers, from 45 Years director Andrew Haigh.

Perhaps most tellingly, he recently replaced Blake Jenner in Richard Linklater’s screen adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along, which the Boyhood director is shooting scene-by-scene over the course of 20 years. So clearly at least one production company is confident he’ll still be a star in two decades.

Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. Photo / Supplied

Fitting, then, that he should make his Oscar debut in what looks like a vintage Best Actor line-up. This category is typically far more bruising, and less interesting, than its female counterpart, but the 2023 vintage is the most exciting, and open-ended, in years.

Austin Butler, there for Elvis, provides the dazzling instant star turn; Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin) is the seasoned pro on a mid-career hot streak. Brendan Fraser (The Whale, opening in the UK next week) is the beloved exile making a return against the odds – while in Living, Bill Nighy gives the sort of career-crowning performance that makes you freshly appreciate the preceding decades of work.

This is fine company for Mescal to be among. And it’s to his credit – and awards season’s benefit – that he could still very feasibly win.