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Paul Mescal is reflecting on how five years of fame has changed life as he knows it.
“It feels like it’s been pretty intense. I feel like the last two years I feel like I’m slightly getting my feet with it,” Mescal, 29, says at the PEOPLE/EW and Shutterstock studio at the Toronto International Film Festival, where his new movie Hamnet has premiered to raves.
From Nomadland director Chloé Zhao, Hamnet also stars Jessie Buckley, Emily Watson and Jacobi Jupe.
Mescal first broke out for his work in the 2020 global hit miniseries Normal People, which marked his second-ever onscreen role. Since then, the actor received an Academy Award nomination for his performance in 2022’s Aftersun and has starred in acclaimed films like The Lost Daughter and All of Us Strangers and the Ridley Scott’s blockbuster Gladiator II.
“I’ve been very lucky that I’ve been on projects with people that I deeply admire and also have experience,” he says, noting Hamnet costar Watson, 58, as a mentor. Mescal and Watson previously worked together on the 2022 movie God’s Creatures, in which Watson portrayed Mescal’s mother.
“I’ve had the privilege of working with Emily twice, and there’s no person who I think has navigated this career better than someone like Emily,” he tells PEOPLE. “It’s just true, I’ve had these incredible figures that I respect but also who know what I’ve gone through. So I’ve essentially had my hand held by people that I deeply admire for those five years.”
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In his breakout role in Normal People, Mescal portrayed an Irish student-athlete who embarks on a secret relationship with a classmate named Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) as they finish high school and enter college. Today, with talk of a second Oscar nomination, the actor slips into a fatherly role in Hamnet playing the legendary playwright William Shakespeare, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling 2020 novel of the same name.
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Hamnet depicts a fictional account of Shakespeare’s life with his young family; Buckley, 35, portrays the Bard’s wife Agnes, while Watson plays Mescal’s onscreen mother as Mary Shakespeare. Child actor Jupe, 12, portrays William and Agnes’ son Hamnet; an official synopsis for the movie describes it as “the powerful love story that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.”
Produced by Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes, the film takes place during the Black Plague in 1580s England, mixing actual history with reimagined circumstances. In real life, Shakespeare’s wife was named Anne Hathaway; the couple shared three children, one of whom was named Hamnet and died at a young age.
Following Hamnet’s premiere in Toronto, the movie is in select theaters Nov. 27, then nationwide Dec. 12.
