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“Normal People” Star Paul Mescal in Dior Homme for GQ Magazine

Posted on October 20, 2020

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“Normal People” star Paul Mescal is featured in the November 2020 issue of GQ magazine photographed by Alasdair McLellan and styled by Ellie Grace Cumming.

The realization that he was suddenly famous came to Mescal while he was indoors and scrolling through his phone as a newcomer to a city he had moved to just before it went into lockdown. “Maybe it’s just my algorithm on Twitter, but it seemed like my demographic was kind of going mad for the show,” he says. “And that was a moment for a big exhale and ‘Okay. Thank God people don’t hate it. In fact, people kind of like it a lot.’ ”

And how does he feel about Connell’s chain—the chain that launched a thousand posts and think pieces and shopping guides? “It wasn’t something that we put any focus on during filming. I think there has been a kind of leaning on the sexualizing of it, which has been a little bit difficult to adjust to,” Mescal says. “I don’t really have a response to it, because I don’t know what to say other than it’s a chain, and it’s a chain that’s referenced in the book, and it’s a chain that Connell wears. It’s not something I lie in bed thinking about at night.”

He is quick to say that, of course, he is not ambivalent about his fame. That he feels “totally privileged” to be in the position that he’s in: “To be thrust into the spotlight in a time when everyone’s living in these really stressful environments of fucking COVID and trying to survive…” He takes a deep sigh. “It’s just been the most adrenaline-fueled, stressful, exciting time of my life.”