The rain hasn’t started yet, but it’s a rare, grey, and gloomy Saturday morning in Los Angeles. Paul Mescal is back on the West Coast, finally free from his “Beatles” movie production commitments to talk about his celebrated performance as William Shakespeare in Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet.” A performance that should land him his second Academy Award nomination. I mean, it better.
READ MORE: “Hamnet’s” Chloe Zhao: “It’s Not My Job To Tell People How They Should Feel”
Mescal has got a busy 48 hours ahead of himself. A few interviews, a 3-hour drive out to attend the Palm Springs Film Festival Gala. Then back to LA on Sunday, where he’ll attend the Critics’ Choice Awards, and Jessie Buckley’s Best Actress win will justifiably make him cry, or blush, or a combination of the two. But on this morning, in a SoHo House space with a spectacular view, it was calm. It was quiet. And Mescal was down to talk in-depth about everything from his filmmaking preferences to addressing a silly out-of-control rumor (no, he’s not taking two years off) to his newfound love for playing guitar to the freedom of working with Zhao, to the possibility of directing in his future, and so, so much more.
Now, if only your intrepid interviewer could focus because, listen, there’s nothing like speaking talent just hours after your country participated in a surprise illegal invasion of a sovereign nation…
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The Playlist: Well, crazy things happened last night. What a wonderful morning to wake up to, but whatever.
Paul Mescal: F**king insane.
Yeah, it’s not fun. But more fun is your movie. Is that a good transition?
So, good. It’s tidy. Tidy.
I know you’ve been busy shooting those other films the past few months, but have you gotten any feedback from friends or colleagues who’ve caught “Hamnet”?
The movie? Most of my friends live in the U.K. It’s just about to come out over there.
Oh, right.
Yeah. But a lot of my friends saw it at the BFI when we had our London premiere. My family saw it there. So, it is kind of like you forget that ultimately the audience that you’re making for is the people that you love, especially a film like this. But it’s amazing to just hear the responses of people coming out and really having generally cathartic responses to the film.
How many times have you seen it yourself?
I’ve seen it basically like two full times and then other times like 75% of the film because I had to [leave]. When I saw it in Toronto, I saw it up until the rehearsal scene, and then I had to jump on a plane back to “Beatles.” And then the last time I saw a bit of it was, I think, it was Toronto, actually. I’ve seen it like two and a half times, and in London.
So, you’re an actor who’s O.K. with watching yourself on screen? It doesn’t freak you out?
I think I do freak. The first time you see it, I’m like, “Oh Jesus, please be good, please be good.” So, the first time you see it, you don’t actually see it. You’re just like watching to see if the performance holds together. But I weirdly think when you’re like a young actor starting, I think it’s important to watch it even if it is painful because you have to learn and remind yourself of what maybe felt during the day to film it versus what it looks like. And sometimes they marry, and then other times you’re like, “Oh, the scene that felt like absolute dog s**t to shoot really translates well on screen and vice versa.” So, I think I’ll get to a point, hopefully, where I don’t watch because I think it’s useful.
Compared to your conversations about making the movie with Chloe, and even when you were shooting it, is it what you expected her vision to be?
I think I wasn’t expecting it to feel as still and “Barry Lyndon”-esque. And when I first saw the first couple of like frames from a monitor, I was like, “Oh, this is really exciting to me because it doesn’t feel like it’s shot or directed in a way that is like a costume period drama.” It feels like they’re trying to establish the rules of like traditional cross arch theater. That was really exciting to me. I also started to feel like we were going to be shooting a lot of the scenes in masters for the most part, or oftentimes, like three setups or two, which I think, from working on the stage, that’s something I like. Because you don’t have to like modulate or time your performance throughout the day. It’s like you’ll be shooting the scenes pretty quickly, and I enjoyed that way of working.
Wait, so you prefer long shots. Do you prefer the breakdown of long shot, mid-shot, etc.?
I don’t like when you feel the kind of ominous pressure of a camera starting out here and then going boom, boom, boom [Mescal motions closer and closer and closer]. Obviously, there are lots of close-ups in the film, but oftentimes we would just shoot close-ups or just a wide master. So, it was like, you’re not doing that, which I’m trying to get better at, but like I think it’s very hard for an actor because the more you do it, you start to understand the rhythm of what it is to shoot a big scene where they’ll just kind of like dip your toe in the water in a big wide and then you’ll suddenly feel the like internal clock go, “Oh, f**k, f**k, f**k. They’re coming in, they’re coming in. ” And that wasn’t true of how we went about shooting this film. It felt free,r and it felt like it removed the pressure of that traditional style of filmmaking or coverage. There was no coverage really shot in the film.
Was there blocking, or did Chloe sort of let you all flow through or improvise on the set?
She would do this thing where she called Free Blocking Mondays. She’s the most freeing director to work with. But obviously, depending on when they’re setting up the lights, she would let Jessie and me play. We would never discuss the beats of a scene. Say, after we started filming, she didn’t want to know what we were thinking. She didn’t want to know what our choices were maybe leaning towards. She would start filming and oftentimes wouldn’t know if she felt it was in the right area, and other times would know if she wanted to modulate. But it was really exciting because then you felt like a prize fighter waiting to go fight because you’re waiting. I’m waiting to see what Jessie’s going to do. She’s waiting to see what I’m going to do. One of the things that I think I’m proudest of is that scene when Will goes, for a second time, he goes back to London, and that’s just basically shot in one shot through the window. And I remember us just circling each other like nonverbally listening to music, and then it was “action,” and Jessie took a swing at me and just missed, and we just got into this…I just think that’s exactly the kind of acting I want to be doing, where you are locked into another performer’s impulses, you’re listening physically because we knew we didn’t have much to say in the scene, but the fact that that plays and we go out of the frame or under the table, and you don’t see us. But you feel everything that those characters are feeling. I think that’s like a real testament to the confidence that Chloe had in us. She wasn’t like, “I need to see your face with us.” It was really exciting that day.
That scene though. I know you don’t want to use the word improvisational, but that acting moment happens, you do another cut or another take. Does Chloe say “Do it again,” or was that just that one version she ended up putting in the movie?
That’s the only version where Jessie swung at me. We have other versions where we were like on the table, and we were kissing. It was like weird. The bandwidth for that was pretty wide.
Were you excited that it made it into the final cut?
I remember that day, and I was like excited to see what version of it she chose, but it’s just so exciting because you haven’t blocked it, it’s a real test for an actor to be present and listening because you’re like, “I have no idea what Jessie’s going to do. ” So, you’re very much in your body, and you can feel it for both of us that our bodies are like wired because we’re like, “Where’s the next move going to be?” And I think that’s true of life for the most part. And I think we did three or four takes, but I think that’s a scene that obviously the context for that is different because it’s around the death of the child. I think what felt particularly ripe for the three of us was this concept of being an artist who has to leave their home often and leave loved ones, and when you throw the layer on top that their son has just died in the three weeks prior, it adds another layer. But I think it’s something that I think a lot of creatives will recognize in terms of loving your partner or loving your family, but also feeling this draw to be somewhere else, making something.
