Paul Mescal first encountered The History of Sound in an unlikely place: a hotel bed in Australia, fresh out of quarantine, just before Christmas. He had been in the country shooting Benjamin Millepied’s Carmen when the script arrived. Restless and alone, he began to read.
“I remember, I was Paul Mescal first encountered The History of Sound in an unlikely place: a hotel bed in Australia, fresh out of quarantine. I was reading in bed and I was bawling.”
“There’s this one eighth-of-a-page scene where the older version of Lionel is eating tinned peaches out of a can. I think it’s a perfect screenplay. The fact that this is Ben Shattuck’s first screenplay is nothing short of remarkable. I was like, ‘I want this film to be made tomorrow.’”
The impatience, he laughs, was misplaced. “What I probably learned is that films don’t get made overnight.”
What’s striking about the moment is not just its intensity but its timing. Mescal was still in the first flush of global recognition after Normal People—that sudden, pandemic-era jolt that turned him from an unknown Irish stage actor into a household name. He had gone from Connell Waldron’s shyness to Charlotte Wells’ troubled young father in Aftersun, and was on the cusp of his leap into the multiplex as the tenacious Lucius in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II.
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