Paul Mescal has admitted that he has found his rise to fame “difficult” to navigate.
The Kildare actor found fame following the success of the Hulu and BBC adaptation of the Sally Rooney book Normal People, where he played Connell Waldron.
The 24-year old spoke with Harper’s Baazar about adjusting to life in the public eye, admitting it was a “difficult adjustment to make”.
“I’m navigating it by trying to listen to advice,” he told the publication, “But ultimately, anybody who has gone through something like this, you have to go through it as patiently as possible.”
“There’s no rule book. It’s a massive culture shift in anybody’s life to go from not being in the public eye to being in the public eye. It’s a difficult adjustment to make.
“The only positive in it is that it has no impact on the work that I want to do. It’s just a by-product of the work, and that’s the way that I want to keep it,” he added.
Speaking about being compared to his character Connell by fans, Paul said: “It’s a totally natural thing to do, I suppose. It’s not something I have any control over if that makes sense.
“I can’t dictate to it, unless I want it to be super present in social media and want to be presenting myself as I am all the time to everyone, which I’m not interested in.”
“I think there has to be a degree of privacy to how you conduct yourself, so that an audience doesn’t know you all the time when you’re playing a new character or something like that.
“I think it’s just a combination between Connell and myself, is just a by-product of people watching the show and enjoying it and wanting me to be him maybe, but that’s not the case.”
Paul added that he found comfort in knowing that his co-star Daisy-Edgar Jones was dealing with the same sudden rise to fame as he was: “It’s just so nice because there has been a huge change in a short period of time, and that short period of time happens to be in one of probably the most historic moments that we will ever live through.”
“We’re in constant contact about how this crazy thing has happened to one or both of us, because it’s been pretty nuts if I’m being totally honest.”
