Just a normal person
On the one year anniversary of Normal People’s screening on April 26th 2020, we look back on seven times Paul Mescal was just a normal Irish lad.
When the British media did their usual trick of claiming any Irish person of note or talent as their own, with Paul Mescal, he was having none of it. Taking to Twitter, Mescal set the record straight and tweeted “I’m Irish.” just like any self-respecting Irish person would do in that situation.
Sitting in his home house in the middle of lockdown, Paul Mescal used his time wisely, by finely tuning a couple of songs ready for when the sessions return. His little sister Nell posted a video of the pair of them singing a cover of Nothing Arrived by Villagers, Mescal is accompanying her on the piano and throwing in a few bars.
Irelands’ love for Seamus Heaney runs far beyond the enforced rote learning of Leaving Cert English Paper 1, even though that’s normally where most Irish people are introduced to it. Heaney’s poems can revisit Irish people at any point, just like Paul Mescal. Who sent an uncharacteristic retweet of one of Heaney’s sonnets last August. Retweeting “When all the others were away at Mass” Mescal wrote, “The man was a genius!”.
A true marker of an Irish lad has to be his affinity for a fry. Paul Mescal went one step beyond this and made his TV debut in an advertisement for sausages. Not just any old sausage, Denny sausages, which are as Irish as they come. The ad culminates in Mescal taking the bus to Ballyhaunis after taking a bite of a sausage that encouraged him to “Seize the Denny”.
Displaying the pure practicalities of an Irish lad when it comes to clothing, Paul Mescal donned his Kildare GAA shorts for a shoot with GQ. To ramp up the look the stylists paired the shorts with a fleece that had a 1k price tag on it, just to even things out. He looks like he’s just clocked off midweek training and went for a stroll by the lake, the photo is even complete with a swan, swimming off in the background.
Nothing to see here just two high profile Irish lads going for a walk by the canal. Paul Mescal and Dermot Kennedy went for a walk along the canal in Kildare’s Ardclogh, and took a cheesy selfie together. To the seasoned walkers along the canal, they definitely just looked like two lads getting some fresh air out on a lockdown walk.
Perhaps Paul Mescal’s finest performance for Ireland was when he fetched drinks from the local shop. Strolling down the streets of London wearing the Kildare GAA shorts, a vintage Adidas and scruffy looking runners. Two cans of Gordon’s premixed pink gin and tonic in one hand, and a craft beer in the other, shying away from airpods opting for the OG headphones, the ones with the wires that slot into your ear. He just looks like a normal lad, whose turn it is to pop to the Spar.
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