Paul Mescal has admitted the public interest in his personal life drives him “f**king mad”.
The Maynooth native, 27, shot to fame following his role as Connell Waldron in the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s bestselling novel Normal People.
In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, the actor said: “If I’m going to make TV shows like Normal People, there’s going to be an appetite from the world. Eighty percent of that is palatable. And then 20 percent of it is devastating.”
He continued: “The stuff that hurts is the personal stuff. It’s nobody else’s business and should never be commented on because it’s indecent. And it’s unkind.”
“Honest answer, it makes me angry… It’s the entitlement to the information that people expect that just drives me f**king mad.”
It comes months after Paul’s public split from singer Phoebe Bridgers.
The former couple started dating in 2020, and were rumoured to be engaged early last year.
However, Phoebe sparked split speculation in December when she was spotted “flirting” with comedian Bo Burnham at Kate Berlant’s one-woman comedy show.
In an interview with Vanity Fair in January, Paul admitted he wants to keep his relationship status private going forward.
He explained: “I definitely feel the temptation to say the status of my whatever—that will always be there. But I don’t think that’s a wise thing to do.”
“When Normal People came out, I was very forthright in interviews, and it didn’t actually serve me. But the temptation still exists to be like, ‘Shut the f**k up. This is my life. This is what’s going on. Or this is what’s going on.’”
“But moving forward as much as I can, that’s going to be my life that is private. That’s a difficult thing to achieve. But giving strangers an answer about my life doesn’t actually help me. It’s like a quick boost of serotonin, being like, ‘I’ve said what I need to say. And then it’s just Twitter fodder.”
