While he did earn a Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role Oscar nomination last year for “Aftersun,” actor Paul Mescal did miss out on a follow-up nod for his critically acclaimed performance in 2023′ “All Of Us Strangers.” And if Oscars overlooked him for that role, the BAFTA, British Independent Film Awards, and London Critics Circle Film Awards did not. Either way, as one of the most in-demand actors on the planet currently, having just wrapped on Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator 2,” he’s probably not too upset about it.
Mescal has many things in the works, and there’s even more to add. According to a new interview in British Vogue, the actor will also be a roguish young Shakespeare in Chloé Zhao’s take on Maggie O’Farrell’s “Hamnet.”
The actor apparently confirmed the news in the article. “That book – it’s just devastating. I can’t wait,” he said of the part. “If I told a younger version of myself that this would be [shooting] this year, I wouldn’t believe it. I’ve obviously been in a film with Jessie [Buckley] before [Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Lost Daughter’], but we’ve never shared the screen or a working process together. I think she’s one of our present-day greats. And Chloé is somebody I can’t wait to get in the weeds with and get into the heads of those characters.”
The casting of Buckley and Mescal was known before, but this is the first time his role has been revealed and confirmed. The movie is based on a historical fiction novel that imagines the story of Agnes—the wife of the world’s most famous writer, William Shakespeare— as she struggles to come to terms with the loss of her only son, Hamnet. The novel charts the emotional, familial, and artistic consequences of that loss, bringing to life a human and heart-stopping story as the backdrop to the creation of The Bard’s Hamlet.
Mescal is also working on an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” from Richard Linklater. Like Linklater’s “Boyhood” project, it’s a decades-long project, and it’ll take several years to complete.
“It’s great,” Mescal said. “The thing that’s different about this is that it’s obviously a pre-existing Sondheim musical. I love musicals. I’m singing — the whole shebang. We’ll be sporadically shooting that over the next 20 years, which is like… it sounds so bizarre even coming out of my own mouth,” he said. “We’re still in its infancy, to be honest.”
Twenty years, my god! Will cinema even be around by then? Honestly, all I can wrap my head around is waiting for “Hamnet” for now. Here’s a taste if you don’t know Sondheim’s original musical.