The TV show Paul Mescal calls “nearly perfect”
The career ascendancy of Paul Mescal looks like it will never slow down. After his feature film debut in 2021’s The Lost Daughter, Mescal drew widespread acclaim for his roles in both God’s Creatures and Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, the latter of which saw an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’.
An Oliver Award for A Streetcar Named Desire soon followed, but it all really began for Mescal with his first television role in the BBC drama miniseries Normal People, an adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel of the same name. That was the moment when it became clear Mescal was a star in the making.
While Normal People is TV fans’ favourite Mescal performance, for the actor himself, there looks to be only one contender. Mescal once went on record to state his admiration for one of the greatest TV shows of all time, a crime drama starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson that arrived on screens in 2014.
Of the first season of True Detective, Mescal told W Magazine: “I’ve watched that show definitely three, maybe four times. I’m obsessed with that piece of television. I think it’s just nearly perfect. I just love that show so much. I think Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are pretty close to perfect. You can go back and watch it three or four times and not get bored.”
The first season of Nic Pizzolatto’s anthology crime series features some of McConaughey and Harrelson’s best-ever acting work. It tells of two Louisiana police detectives who investigate the murder of a prostitute in 1995. Nearly two decades later, the case comes up again, and the show delivers one hell of a narrative doused in philosophical intrigue.
Mescal first watched True Detective when he was in drama school and closely analysed the performances of both McConaughey and Harrelson. When the Covid lockdowns hit, the actor used the opportunity to watch the show again and look into the deeper reasons why the quality of it was so high.
“It’s not just the acting,” he said. “It’s the production design, the way it’s shot, the direction of it, the music – it’s all moving in the right direction.” The show provides a fascinating insight into masculinity, and it’s something that Mescal certainly picked up on, explaining how the trope works.
“I think Matthew McConaughey’s character, Rust, in particular, is more introspective, which I always find more interesting to watch,” Mescal noted. “With Woody Harrelson’s character, Marty, you feel like he’s more hypermasculine, but as the show goes on, the more you see he’s wrestling with that, and it makes him uncomfortable, and he’s trying to step into a role.”
Check out a clip of True Detective season one below to get a taste of Mescal’s deep admiration.
