Paul Mescal has revealed the sweet advice that his co-star, Andrew Scott, gave him after his breakup from Phoebe Bridgers.
The actor, 27, spoke candidly about Scott’s words of wisdom during a recent interview with Esquire. He went on to reflect on the past year, during which he appeared to split from Bridgers after two years of dating.
While Mescal declined to comment on his ex and his personal life, he did share the one thing that Scott told him about love after the breakup. “The only thing you’re left with after love is grief. Which is, like, a bleak thing, but I think it’s just a fact,” he said, quoting his All of Us Strangers co-star.
Mescal and Bridgers first started dating in 2020, with rumours of an engagement first sparking in April 2022. During Mescal’s interview with The Guardian in November 2022, the outlet wrote that he and Bridgers “are reported to be engaged”. They later retracted the claim, which sparked rumours that the pair had split.
In December 2022, Bridgers was spotted with Bo Burnham, which further fueled the breakup speculation. While the “Scott Street” singer hasn’t publicly commented about her relationship with Mescal, her romance with Burnham was inadvertently confirmed by Keith Urban in May. The pair were seen kissing in the background of Urban’s TikTik video, captured while attending Taylor Swift’s concert.
Earlier this month, the Normal People star also opened up about the overwhelming public interest in his private relationships. During a recent interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Mescal spoke about fan comments on his personal life, saying that “it’s nobody else’s business because it’s indecent”.
“And it’s unkind,” he continued. “Honest answer, it makes me angry… It’s the entitlement to the information that people expect that just drives me mad.”
He also acknowledged that if he’s “going to make TV shows like Normal People, there’s going to be an appetite from the world,” adding: “Eighty per cent of that is palatable. And then twenty per cent of it is devastating.”
In February, just months after it was first reported that he and Bridgers had split, Mescal expressed that he was going to be keeping his relationship status “private” after their rumoured breakup. In an interview with Vanity Fair, he said that while he’s felt the “temptation” to discuss the “status of his whatever,” he didn’t think that it was “a wise thing” for him to do.
“But the temptation still exists to be like, ‘Shut the f*** up. This is my life. This is what’s going on,’” he said. “Or, ‘This is what’s not going on.’”
He further explained how speaking publicly about his relationship wouldn’t benefit him. “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,” he continued. “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.”
However, Mescal added that as an actor in Hollywood, he understood why fans have tried to pry into his personal life.
“People are going to write and say things because there’s a certain interest with any person who’s in the public eye in how that person lives their life and who they’re living up with, and what they’re doing and how they’re going about doing it,” the Aftersun star said. “And look, a lot of the time people are really kind about their support for me. That’s my predominant experience.”
