GLADIATOR II Star Paul Mescal Covers GQ Magazine

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GLADIATOR II star Paul Mescal covers the latest issue of GQ magazine photographed by Dan Jackson.

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On his workaholic tendencies… “My agent refers to me openly as a psychopath when it comes to work…I want this to never stop. So with that comes a kind of neurosis of control.”

Ridley Scott on casting Paul Mescal in Gladiator II… “Very nice, very sweet, very straightforward. As they say in America, no-shit kind of guy, and I like that.”

On getting out of his own head on the Gladiator II set… “I was like, ‘Okay, today’s the day that Denzel’s going to be on set.’ And I was so incapacitated by it that I suddenly was like, ‘This is so fucking stupid. I have a job to do.’”

On why he is mad at Ridley Scott… “The only thing I will forever be angry at Ridley for is his deep desire to shoot at the fucking peak of summer, as a pasty Irish boy who does not do well in the heat, in armor, covered in fake tan and sweat, rolling around…Those fights were intense.”

On creating boundaries around his personal life… “I’ve learned that there’s certain lines in the sand now for me that just are going to be impenetrable for the benefit of my own sanity…I mean, the speculation has been kind of mad for the last x amount of years…I’m not comfortable inviting any access into that part of my life. How I am in my private life is so precious to me because I get very little of it, and it might be public interest, but it’s not public-obligated information.”

On the TikTok rumors about his one night stands… “We were looking at the videos and we were pissing ourselves at it. Categorically untrue. And we were laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing…And the one thing that upset me was that I was in the kitchen, I remember my mum looking at the videos and she was getting upset. Isn’t that devastating? I was like, Oh, it’s funny to us—my brother, me, my sister—because we know that this is the way the internet works. It’s hilarious. If it was true, it’d be fucking bad, but as a rumor, it’s funny. Then I was like, Oh, if you’re a mother, her impulse is to come out and be like, ‘He wouldn’t do this.’ ”

On the rumors of him playing Paul McCartney in the Beatles biopic… “I would love to be involved, but there’s nothing set in stone.”

On his gut feeling that he will not live a long life… “I’ve always been convinced that I’m not going to live a long life…It’s just like a gut feeling. And maybe it’s to do with the fact that I can’t visualize myself as an 80-year-old man.”

 

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[Photo Credit: Dan Jackson/GQ Magazine]

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