Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Paul Mescal on Playing Shakespeare, Working with Legends and Crafting Complex Characters

Episode Date: November 30, 2025

Academy Award nominee Paul Mescal joins Willie Geist to discuss playing young William Shakespearein his 2025 film Hamnet as well as his role in Gladiator II alongsideDenzel Washington and director Ridley Scott. Plus, the Normal People and Aftersun star opens up about preparing to portray Paul McCartney in an upcoming Beatles biopic, how he builds complex characters, and his journey from school musicals to Hollywood. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. Really happy to bring in my conversation this week with one of the brightest rising stars in Hollywood, Paul Mezkel. You may know him best as the star of Gladiator 2, where he went toe to toe and face to face with Denzel Washington in a massive blockbuster that grossed, I don't know, half a billion dollars or something like that. He's starring now in a movie called Hamnet, based on a novel, very popular novel. He plays William Shakespeare in this just extraordinary movie that provides the backstory, the inspiration for his tragedy, Hamlet. It's the story of his real-life son. He had twin sons, the real-life William Shakespeare. This is in around 1580, we're talking about. And he has twin children, a boy and a girl. The boy's name is Hamlet, and he died. at 11 years old of the pestilence, as they called it back then, got sick and died. So it's this at first beautiful and then agonizing story of young William Shakespeare, who's just a Latin tutor and an aspiring playwright, nobody knows who he is yet, who's now getting a little bit of acclaim and going to London and the Globe Theater to stage his plays, shuttling back

and forth to the countryside where his family is. It's just so well-acted across from an actress named Jesse Buckley. who plays his wife, Shakespeare's wife, and you can bet we'll be getting a lot of Oscar talk for this performance. Both of them will. So a great guy, so happy to sit down with him. You might remember, too, if you're a fan. He kind of burst onto the scene in 2020 with the show Normal People, the series. It was on Hulu, a BBC thing that just became a big hit took off during the pandemic.

Then he earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in the movie After Sun. just a great Irish guy who started as a Gaelic football star, which is kind of a combination of rugby and soccer, was an athlete, and you'll hear him talk about in high school, just going out at 16 years old, auditioning for the school play and winning the part of the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera and kind of being off to the races from there. Went to college, graduated, started his career.

He's done a lot on stage. He's won awards there and now developing a big film career too. So sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation. with Paul Meskel right now on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thanks for doing this, Paul. It's great to see you. I was just telling you, I saw the film a couple of days ago, and I'm still thinking about it. I was so moved by it, your performance, Jesse's performance, Jacoby's performance, the young boy in Hamnet. I'm just curious, first of all, how you approached this version of William Shakespeare,

because as we were saying, you're not trying to capture his entire life and career, you're capturing a moment in time. So how did you look at this as an actor? Yeah, I think the first, like, typically I would have been nervous about the concept of like a Shakespeare biopic and being asked to play Shakespeare. But I'd read the book before and I was acutely aware that that wasn't the avenue that was of interest to Maggie, the writer and Chloe, the director. It was, you don't really hear, you don't hear his full name until the last 20 minutes of the film. So it did open up a real, like, sense of excitement for me because it was like,

It made him accessible, I think. I was like, oh, this isn't William Shakespeare in, like, as a title, it's an artist. And I could relate to that, the concept of, like, feeling like you have to express something, but you're not aware of, like, your own myth yet. Like, Shakespeare doesn't know that he's, we're going to be sitting here talking about him 400 years later. He's just somebody who's a compulsion to write and tell stories. And I'm not a writer, but I feel connected to him in terms of wanting to communicate something about the world that we live and the lives that we choose to live and everything that goes between that. So it just made, it took the kind of a sense of panic away from, like, where do you begin if you're told, like, play one of the greatest geniuses that ever impact the world.

I'll be like, I give that to someone else. Exactly. You know, all right. So I felt very excited by the kind of set up of the book and the film. And that's part of the beauty of it. this is not the immortal William Shakespeare that we all know and have read in our schools for centuries, as you say, this is a struggling young artist, a Latin tutor, a teenager, looking for love and a family and trying to find his way. So when you first heard that this

book was going to be made into a film and that the director was very interested in you playing Shakespeare, did that thrill you? Did that excite you? Like, to be honest, I think I did my own fair share of manipulation with that. Like, I had heard that Chloe, she tells, She had basically passed on the film the day before I met her. So we were in Telly Ride together, and Jesse was there with Afterson, and Jesse was there with women talking. And I met Chloe, and I was kind of flirting with the idea of bringing up the Hamlet thing because I knew she'd been, but I never really know how to broach those conversations.

So I was like, hey, what are you up to? Anything coming down the line? And she started talking about Hamlet, and then I was, okay, great, we can talk about this. she'd initially pass and then I think me and Jesse being in the same place over the weekend up in the mountains

in nature which is very much like a big character in Hamlet's film was kind of a beautiful coincidence that I think then she could see a map

through what the film could look like but when for Chloe Zhao to be interested in the concept of working with you I was like this is nuts

yeah people don't know she's the account Award winning director. Brilliant. Incredible. Brilliant. That's interesting to hear it wasn't quite serendipity.

It was your plan to get... It was my grand to manipulate. No, because I loved the book so much. I really felt like... I felt like I could see a way of playing Shakespeare in a way that excited me. And I think that would maybe step away from the tropes that we assume we... like we have these assumptions about Shakespeare that I just think are completely nonsensical. Like we actually have no idea who he was other than the fact that he married Anne Hathaway,

who's Anya's in the film. And he had three, he had his children. And he wrote these plays. But after that, like this kind of bookish notion or this, I don't know, this academic kind of lore that has surrounded him, I really felt like the book tried to remove that. I was like, oh, this feels like an animalistic. like impulsive man who's got an extraordinary talent,

but actually he's not interested in his talent. He's interested in like the act of making, which I think is a really, I could just, you know, when you have that kind of feeling in your hands where you're like, oh, I know how to go about doing this. And oftentimes I don't have that feeling. And I have you to work at the concept of what it would be like

to make this character, but I always knew what the kind of rough sketch of him would look like for me, which was exciting. It struck me watching the film, and maybe you too, that we know the work, which is like handed down on stone tablets at this point. But we don't really think a lot about the inspiration for the work.

What was he feeling? What was he living as any writer would in that moment? Yeah, and I think that this film really, I felt incredibly emotional. There's a sequence at the end of the film where we go to the globe and it's the first run of Hamlet, not the first, but the first kind of iteration of that play with his company. And I was struck by the fact that we take his brilliance for granted because it is brilliant.

But what I don't think we focus on is the kind of generosity of spirit and bravery that it takes to take an incredibly painful period in someone's life and hand it over to an audience for public consumption. and that's kind of where I separate from him in my head. It's like I have no interest in doing that. And that's an amazing act of generosity that he has given us for 400 years. He's shaped this love and grief and transfer. And not made it just about this pain of losing a son, but kind of making it this temple,

this place that people can visit his son and his love for his son, his wife's love for his son. He's given it to us forever. and I was struck when we were shooting those scenes that I was like, that's actually his brilliance to me. Like obviously his poetry is so beautiful, but there's a real emotional, humanistic literacy that I think he just, there's few in fire,

like there's few people who've given us that over the course of history. For sure. The film is beautiful, but it's also devastating. You don't have to be apparent to appreciate what that family is feeling. How did you get to that place? Not a father yourself yet, perhaps. But how did you get into that what a father would feel going through all that was happening in that home? I mean, I've played, like, after some, I played a father.

I don't necessarily sign up to the concept that you have to have lived the experience to relate. Because I think, I don't know, you're a father. and I don't think, when I speak to people who are like invest in the work that they do, of course they're a father person, but they're a human being before there are anything else. And I feel like I could access that I also love the idea of being a father. I'm excited about hopefully that part of my life.

So it's not something that I feel like, oh, afraid of. But I think, as you're buoyed about the kind of devastation of the film, I do, it's obviously a part of the film that audiences are connecting with, but there is, the part that I think is actually most important is the beginning of the film, where you build this relationship between two people and all of the loss that the audience and these characters feel can only be serviced if you really feel this love

and commitment and loyalty that these two characters and these children, this family unit is like a nest. And I think by really investing, and the joy of that and the real kind of, it's really quite sweepingly romantic at the start. And like gorgeous and lush. And I loved really investing in that because then ultimately, if you stay true to that,

all of the work is done for you because you have built these relationships, both on and off screen, so that like the loss of a son or the loss of a relationship is only as painful in relationship. to what you've invested at the beginning. Right. And I think that both those things are crucially important to the,

to the hopeful, hopefully the catharsis that the audience feels at the end. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Paul Meskel right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Paul Meskel. I don't want to give away too much. You can not talk about it if you don't want to, but there's a scene when you come home from London. racing home.

Yeah. And you see your daughter. Yeah. And you're so relieved. Yeah. Okay. And you're hugging her. Yeah.

And there's this... Yeah. I'm getting chills talking about. There's this turn to see that you actually shouldn't be celebrating. Yeah. How did you act your way through that moment? That's one of those scenes that you're like, this... I didn't try to overthink it because it actually ties the point that I just said.

It was just like, I loved my family and that family. film. I love them as people. I love them as characters. So you're just trying to like really, you're trying to not predict how that feeling is going to strike you when you walk into the room. There's a myriad of different takes that have the kind of polar opposite responses. That is like one of the scenes that I'm probably proudest that I've ever shot in terms of personally and as a company of actors. It just feels like I haven't experienced what that is, but I feel like that response that Jesse goes through

and I go through and Olivia and Bodie and Emily it feels almost kind of documentary style it's like this feels truthful to me about it also feels like a little bit

like acting Olympics where you're like totally joyful that Olivia is there and you just see his body you just go like oh it's just

yeah I'm very very proud of that moment and it's like that the emotional 180 one of rather than kind of going to the kind of

maybe obvious Greek release of like grief, it just actually totally silences him. He doesn't know what to say or how to act. And it was a, I was worried talking to Chloe as like,

well the audience get that he's grieving. But actually she was so clever with how she directed that and how confident she was and that being the right choice. But then you see, the audience, why isn't he

releasing anything? But you see that in the final 20 minutes. It comes later. It comes later. And I think that's like not, I think the film is also like very much interested

and maybe more stereotypical gender. It's quite gendered, I think the film, in a more traditional sense. And I think that that concept of men or younger man struggling with the kind of

initial release of grief or emotion, I think is true for, not for everyone, but I definitely relate to that feeling. I mean, like, it takes me a second to, like, compute the enormity of what the feeling might be. Versus, like, you see Jesse's, like, it's so profoundly immediate and primal. Primal, that I don't think the film,

or that moment would have worked if I come in and it's the same feeling for me. it. I think that's a real testament to, like, Jesse's term. But also, like, Chloe's, like, the way she modulates all of that so that you get, if it takes time, you know. And you're right as a man. Your instinct, maybe is to be strong.

To be strong and protect. But actually, in that moment, I was like, I don't believe this. Yeah. I don't believe this. And Chloe kept talking about dramatic irony. And in that moment, there's kind of a weird smile that comes over his face because he's like, of course. It was never going to be my daughter because it would be too perfect.

Yeah. This is too, it's unbelievable. I told him to be brave and he's taken the idea of bravery. It's devastating. Yeah. Your co-star, Jesse, is extraordinary. It's unbelievable. People are familiar with her probably.

They've seen her some project, but it does feel like this is the film where the world is really going to know her name. Can you talk about her talent as an actor? I think this performance is like not just one for this year. I think it's one for, like truly for the ages. I think I knew it when we were filming it. But then having seen it and watched it and studied it, I really think it's just profound. It's brilliant.

It is her. It's Anya's. It's like she's got just this appetite before people. a curiosity about people and love for people that it doesn't she hides her brilliant craft in just this like

wild humanity and I think I'm so proud to have like sat across from her and watched her do it and I also just have such a huge love for her that I'm so proud that you always worry that the feeling of making something together

won't translate into the finished product but it superseded my hopes as a collective, but also like Jesse's performance, it's just on a totally different level to to most of the performances I've ever seen.

It's extraordinary. And she says the same about you, by the way, when you read interviews. I pay her under the table. Oh, is that with this? More manipulation. Yeah, more manipulation. There's a theme here. I'm full of dollars, just like, say nice things. Stick around for more of my conversation with Paul Meskell, right after a quick break.

Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Paul Meskel. I want to ask you, Paul, about your start. Yeah. And how you got into performance because you grew up an athlete playing Gaelic football, which for our American audience, a little bit of football, a little bit of rugby, is that fair to say? Yeah, a mish-mash-mash-or somewhere in there. Yeah. Yeah. So it feels like sports were your first priority. Yeah. So at what point does performance and theater come into the picture? It was school. We did a school. We did a school.

musical I was 16 and I was just totally bitten by the bug. I was very grateful. I've said this before, but I'm still like I can't say enough that the school that I went to was public school, like wasn't like a fancy school, but they had this policy where every student, whether you were sporty or had no interest in musical theatre, you had to audition. And I think that I would love for like schools and educational institutions to like really look at that model of just going like, because we don't really focus on the arts enough in school. I'm absolutely positive that that would have passed me by because I didn't fit that demographic.

Right. I was sporty and I still loved playing sports after it, but had my school not afforded me that opportunity to be, hey, this isn't an embarrassing thing to do. You can go and do this. I was just so, I grabbed it with both hands and just absolutely loved it. But it does kind of scare me that had I gone to a different school. Yeah. I wouldn't be the person that I have today.

Did you play the part that you've almost been assigned, which is I'm in the sports and they're the theater kids? And we were talking about this just before we started turning over, just this kind of concept of like you're so malleable as a young adult that you're like, oh, exactly that. You're kind of compartmentalized. and there's kind of like these stereotypes that come up being sporty or being a theatre kid or I was just I'm so impressed by the school I'm also I think we need to give children more credit for the fact that actually if you give them the opportunity to express something that's outside of their small circle they will run with it with both hands it's only embarrassing or frightening until you're told that it's not but we shouldn't be placing that responsibility on

13 to 17-year-olds. I think the infrastructure around them has to be just push a little bit to be like, this is also over here if you want to have a look at it. If you don't want it, cool. Like some kids went in and sang happy birthday because they really didn't want to be in the musical, but everybody was given the opportunity

to be like, hey, if you actually want to give this a go, maybe don't sing happy birthday. But you know what I mean? So it was very double my start. Was this the big phantom performance? It was the big phantom performance. The big phantom. You start right out of the gate with Phantom.

You are the Phantom. Yeah, yeah. I mean, wow, a star immediately. In menuth of nowhere else. Yeah. No, it was, I can, I like distinctly remember just the, I remember doing the first night of it so clearly. And it's a big moment in the town that I grew up as like the school musical.

It's like they build up the sports hall and it's like tiered seating and there's 600 people. there over five, like big and bring in like, be the 20 piece orchestra. I remember like playing this like wooden organ. My knees were just like bouncing, but I was beyond thrilled. And then the performance finished and came out and bowed. And it was the first time that like I'd kind of come up for air in the two and a half hours. And I was like, oh, this feeling is extraordinary. I was saying to somebody earlier, it's like my parents actually met on stage.

So I have this weird thing that I feel like being there makes sense to me. Yeah. You know, being on stage. Yeah. And you felt it first that night. That's amazing. Yeah, it just felt like nothing. I think I'm still, I'm very much still chasing that night when I was 16.

we've done a good job with the pursuit of that feeling. I mean, you've done stage, of course, then you went on after college to, to notably normal people, which came out during the pandemic, which are a new acclaim, not just in the UK, but here, everyone,

we were home and watching, oh, this is a great show. Oh, that's Paul. When that came out at a strange time for anything to come out, and you sort of became this known person, really for the first time, I think it's fair to say.

Except for the school musical and the Noot, of course. Right, right. That was a big night. You were the Phantom forever. Yeah. What did that feel like to you to suddenly be, you know, you've done stage and some television? I think that was like pretty like intense.

Yeah. Period for the world generally. And I think it just felt a little bit magnified in a sense. I was like, it's hard to compute, but weirdly like now post like Oscar nomination for after some big films like Gladiator coming out. I weirdly think the sharpest adjustment period happened when normal people came out. And I'm so grateful to that show and the people that I met on, like, my best friends are from that time and from before.

And I just feel like that was to have that sharpest end and kind of be holding on for dear life, but to have friends who've shared that experience. It makes the kind of ridiculousness of what my... life seems from the outside make more sense. It feels a little bit easier. And that's taking a second to get to. Now I feel like there's not really much more like weirdness that can, that I feel like would be totally new now. Yes.

Which I'm grateful for because it did destabilize me for a bit, I suppose. I'm kind of glad it did because I feel like if it didn't, I'd be a robot. Well, it's probably understandably intoxicating at first, the attention. Oh, I'm doing well. People know who I am. And then I guess at some point you realize, oh, I need to pull this back a little bit if I'm going to have a normal life. Yes.

Right? Yeah. And I think, I can't remember talking this, but you can actually, like, regardless of how don't you are in, like, public spheres, you can live the life that you want to live if you don't operate just purely from a sense of fear. You know, like, of course, it might be a little bit more difficult to walk down, like, Oxford Circus. Like, just don't go there. Right.

You know, like, I think I feel very grateful to, like, the sense. There's a real sense of community in London. I live in London now. There's a real sense that, like, I don't know, it feels like, it's hard to describe. People look after you. They don't want to be invasive. Of course, that happens, but, yeah, it feels more manageable. life feels a little bit more manageable now.

And the leap got bigger with Gladiator too, which you mentioned, this massive Ridley Scott film that has half a billion dollars at the boxoffs. You're the guy, you're the gladiator. But also the opportunity to act with Denzel Washington. What did you learn from that experience? Just being nose to nose. No, yeah.

And just to be with Danzel and Ridley, like, two giants of cinema, like they're kind of, they're there forever. they're like they're on Mount Rushmore of like of cinema and uh I felt very great it felt I feel very I was like very close with Ridley and and Danzel was just such a force to be opposite and to learn from but what I was really grateful was that like they took away the stigma of like oh you're working with Ridley and Danzel it's like you're going to work with colleagues who care deeply about what we're making and it just took away

way, I don't know, I thought going into something like that, it would be a different job. Like something would feel different, but I feel very proud of how we approached that film. And like to be stepping into a kind of world where people have such beloved relationship to the first film, I feel very, very proud of like how we went about doing it, you know. And I've been immense love for Ridley Scott. He's very special to me. Before I let you go, Paul, I've got to ask what you're working about, what you're working on right now, which is playing Paul McCartney.

From Shakespeare to McCartney, you're going big here. How has it been to step into McCartney's shoes? It's a real, real privilege. And as we know, Shakespeare is not alive to have the impact on Hamlet. But I've got to know him and his family a little bit, and they've been so generous with, the idea of us kind of really getting into the four of their lives. And I feel very proud that I feel like there's a transparency with the scripts

and what were the stories that we're telling. It's not polished off. It's a really honest and exciting endeavor that we're stepping into. And it's one that's like keeping our brains and fingers very active. Well, I saw the way you just held the guitar there. One of the things that comes to playing Paul McCartney is playing left-handed. You're not a left-handed. So you're actually learning how to play left-handed.

Wow. Yeah. How's that going? Oh, there was a couple of dark months at the start of the year where I thought it was never going to happen. But it's happening. I'm really proud of the work. It's like just technical, like film aside. It's definitely been the greatest technical challenge of my career.

and I'm really proud with where we've gotten to with it. But we can't wait to see it. And in the meantime, people are going to love Hamnet. You are brilliant in it. Jesse's brilliant. Jacoby, who we didn't get a chance to talk to. It's brilliant, the young boy. So congratulations.

Thanks very much. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Paul. My big thanks again to Paul for a great conversation. Hamnet is just an amazing film and it is in theaters now. And as always, my thanks to all of you for listening again this week. If you want to hear more of our conversations with our guests every week, be sure to click follow so you never miss an episode.

And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend over on NBC to see these interviews with your own two eyes. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.