Paul Mescal has insisted that he doesn't do one-night stands.
The 28-year-old actor was subject to hearsay through a string of videos on TikTok that claimed he had a habit of spending the night with a woman and then leaving immediately the next morning but insisted that the rumours are "categorically untrue" and even though he thought it was funny, his mother was "upset" by the whole thing.
He told GQ: "We were looking at the videos and we were pissing ourselves at it. Categorically untrue. And we were laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing…
"And 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? 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****** bad, but as a rumor, it’s funny. Then I was like, Oh, if you’re a mother, her impulse is to come out and be like, ‘He wouldn’t do this.’"
The 'Gladiator II' age - who is the cover star for the magazine's November issue - shot to fame when he was cast in the television adaptation of 'Normal People' but reflected that in the years since, he has had to set "boundaries" for his own sake.
He said: "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…I mean, the speculation has been kind of mad for the last X amount of years…I’m not comfortable inviting any access into that part of my life. 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."
Read the full feature 'Paul Mescal Enters the Arena' by Gabriella Paiella in GQ’s November issue and on GQ.co.uk
