Paul Mescal’s “dream-role” is an all-American classic
Paul Mescal has enjoyed quite the rise to fame. A graduate of The Lir Academy in Dublin, his first jobs out of the conservatory were in local theatre productions of Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Louise O’Neill’s strikingly feminist Asking For It, and F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. One wonders if he’d have remained solely a theatre actor had he not been cast in the monumentally successful TV series Normal People, which aired during the lockdown of 2020. He’s still performing in theatre productions to this day, and judging from his “dream role”, it seems he’d be happy to end his career treading the boards.
During a recent conversation on Deadline’s 20 Questions podcast, Paul discussed his recent movie Aftersun, the impact of Normal People on his life and career, and named his all-time dream role. “Some day, I’d love to play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman,” he said. “If people want me to still be in stuff when I’m the right age to play that role, yeah. That’s my answer right now, and that will probably change”. He hesitates for a moment,” before adding: “No, I feel like I’ll always want to play that role.”
First performed in 1949, Death of A Salesman is the work of the playwright, intellectual and one-time partner of Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller. It was an immediate success and remains one of the most famous plays in the modern American dramatic canon. Willy Loman is certainly the kind of character an actor like Mescal could seek his teeth into. Insecure, unstable and paranoid, he believes in the American dream with the same unflinching faith of a religious evangelist. That is until the cracks begin to show his mind begins to unravel.
Actors taking on the role of Willie tend to be in their 50s and 60s. Death of a Salesman is, of course, not only a play about one man’s loss of identity; it’s a play about ageing and memory. The play is essentially a patchwork of memories, arguments and dreams – all of which make up the final 24 hours of Loman’s life.
In this way, Death of A Salesman could easily be a play about dementia, meaning Mescal could be waiting some time to fulfil his dream. That being said, he seems pretty determined to play Willy at least once in his life, and we’d certainly pay to see it. He would be following in the footsteps of Dustin Hoffman, Wendell Pierce and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, all of whom have bought Willy to life in the past.
You can hear Paul Mescal discussing his dream role, below.
