Paul Mescal is setting the record straight on those one-night stand rumors.
“F—–g hell!” Mescal, 28, teased in a GQ interview published on Tuesday, October 15.
Mescal was asked to address the TikTok videos that went viral late last year and sparked rumors that the Normal People actor would take dates to a public place the morning after hooking up and would ditch them by running in the opposite direction.
“We were looking at the videos and we were pissing ourselves at it,” Mescal said, revealing that he watched the videos with his siblings, Nell, 21, and Donnacha, 25. “Categorically untrue. And we were laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing.”
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His mother, Dearbhla Mescal, did not find the topic quite as funny.
“The one thing that upset me was that I was in the kitchen, I remember my mum looking at the videos and she was getting upset. Isn’t that devastating?” he told GQ. “I was like, oh, it’s funny to us — my brother, me, my sister — because we know that this is the way the internet works. It’s hilarious. If it was true, it’d be f—–g bad, but as a rumor, it’s funny.”
He continued: “Then I was like, oh, if you’re a mother, her impulse is to come out and be like, ‘He wouldn’t do this.’”
Mescal did not address speculation that he’s dating Gracie Abrams, doubling down on the fact that he has no plans to discuss his personal life. (Mescal previously singer Phoebe Bridgers, but they split in 2023.)
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“I’ve learned that there’s certain lines in the sand now for me that just are going to be impenetrable for the benefit of my own sanity, but also the benefit of my work,” Mescal explained. “Because I think if you don’t have those boundaries up in terms of lines in the sand in regards to your private life, people know way too much about you and then they can’t invest in the imagined landscape of your character because they know what your favorite thing to eat for breakfast is.”
The actor noted that the public discourse about who he’s dating “has been mad” over the past few years — but that doesn’t mean he’s going to fold.
“I’m not comfortable inviting any access into that part of my life,” he said. “How I am in my private life is so precious to me because I get very little of it, and it might be public interest, but it’s not public-obligated information.”
