Getting nominated for an Oscar is Hollywood's biggest honor, but it's also a lot of hard work. Behind the scenes, studios pour thousands if not millions of dollars into promoting films and stars for awards, and the performers and craftspeople themselves work basically full time shaking hands, kissing babies, and explaining their process at screenings and interviews coast-to-coast—and all of that is just to get nominated, let alone to actually secure the trophy. So you can imagine that it was extra delightful for Paul Mescal when he was nominated for Aftersun without really having to lift a finger.
In a new interview with Vanity Fair's Little Gold Men podcast, Mescal reiterates his pride in Aftersun but observes of the Oscar nod that it was "not a film that it's supposed to happen for." Being nominated "was a real surprise, and I think it kind of reaffirmed to me that actually, people were going to go and see that film," he says. "And I also managed to avoid campaigning for it. I was doing a play at the time, because nobody was like—A24 would even say this—I don't think they were anticipating it. So it was like I was off doing my play. It was the dream of not really campaigning."
When he was nominated in 2023, Mescal's mother was beginning the process of chemotherapy to treat cancer. "It’s all a bit overwhelming, especially for my family, because I don’t think anybody or even I was expecting this," he said at the time (via Deadline). "I always knew that I was willing to work hard, but when the nominations came out, and the BAFTAs the week before, something felt slightly absurd about it at all."
Looking back, Mescal's first Oscar nomination was just one stop along the way for a star on the rise. He's now starring in Gladiator II, positioning him as the successor to Russell Crowe, who won an Oscar for his role in the original. Leading a major blockbuster under a legendary director (Ridley Scott) is a far cry from a tiny indie helmed by a relative unknown (Charlotte Wells), the trajectory seems to make perfect sense to him. Though he's shrugged at the idea of doing a superhero flick, "it wasn't that I didn't have an appetite to do big films. I just didn't have an appetite to do big films that, to my mind, didn't have the substance that I wanted to spend my time on," he explains to VF. Gladiator II, on the other hand, "had both of those things."
