When Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor sat down for Entertainment Weekly’s LIE vs LIE segment, what started as promotional fun for their new film THE HISTORY OF SOUND quickly spiraled into something far more revealing and uncomfortable than either actor likely anticipated.
The premise was simple enough: two co-stars, a handful of prompts, and the challenge of weaving truth and fiction so seamlessly that even they couldn’t tell where reality ended and fabrication began. But when Mescal was asked to share a fan encounter that stuck with him, the Irish actor launched into a story that had O’Connor—and viewers—questioning not just its veracity, but its appropriateness for a lighthearted promotional game.
Mescal painted the scene with uncomfortable precision: London’s stage door after a performance of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, where he found himself posing for photos with fans, as actors do. Enter a woman in her fifties with her daughter, both enthusiastic about his work in NORMAL PEOPLE and his theatrical performance that evening. What happened next, according to Mescal’s account, crossed boundaries in a way that left him unsettled enough to remember it months later.
The telling detail wasn’t just in Mescal’s words, but in his need to physically demonstrate the encounter, asking O’Connor’s permission before placing hands on him to recreate whatever inappropriate gesture this alleged fan had made. The moment crystallized the strange intimacy that actors develop while promoting films together—the way they become comfortable enough to use each other’s bodies as props for storytelling, yet still maintain enough respect to ask permission first.
This blend of professional intimacy and personal boundaries runs through THE HISTORY OF SOUND itself, the romantic drama that brought these two actors together in the first place. Opening Friday, the film follows Lionel and David, two men whose connection deepens from their shared studies at the Boston Conservatory to an expedition collecting folk songs in rural Maine after World War I. It’s a story about artistic passion, emotional discovery, and the kind of profound male friendship that existed in an era when such relationships operated in spaces between spoken and unspoken understanding.
The film premiered at Cannes in May to inevitable comparisons with BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, a parallel that clearly frustrates Mescal. His dismissal of the comparison as “lazy” reveals an actor protective of his work’s unique identity, refusing to let it be reduced to surface similarities. As he pointed out in press conference footage, while both films feature men in outdoor settings, THE HISTORY OF SOUND moves in the opposite direction from BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN’s exploration of repression, instead celebrating openness and artistic expression.
Perhaps that’s what makes Mescal’s fan encounter story so compelling within the context of promoting this particular film. Whether true or fabricated for the game, it speaks to the way public figures navigate inappropriate attention while trying to remain accessible to genuine admirers. The story becomes a small mirror of the film’s larger themes about connection, boundaries, and the courage required to be authentic in a world that doesn’t always know how to respond appropriately.
O’Connor, for his part, had to sit there and determine whether his co-star was telling the truth or spinning an elaborate fiction, just as audiences will have to decide what they believe about the characters these actors bring to life in THE HISTORY OF SOUND. The real game wasn’t lie versus lie, but the more complex challenge of distinguishing between different kinds of truth—the literal and the emotional, the factual and the essential.
In the end, whether Mescal’s fan story actually happened matters less than what it reveals about the strange territory actors occupy, somewhere between public and private, accessible yet vulnerable, always performing even when they’re supposedly just being themselves.
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