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Paul Mescal was lying in a hotel bed in Australia, fresh out of quarantine, when he first read THE HISTORY OF SOUND. It was just before Christmas, and he’d been shooting Benjamin Millepied’s CARMEN when the script arrived. Alone and restless, he started reading, and before long he was crying. There’s a scene, he remembers, barely an eighth of a page, where the older version of Lionel eats tinned peaches straight from the can, and it destroyed him completely. He thought it was a perfect screenplay, and the fact that it was Ben Shattuck’s first made it all the more remarkable. He wanted the film made immediately, which makes him laugh now because what he learned, of course, is that films don’t get made overnight.

For audiences, Mescal’s shift from vengeful gladiator to gentle introspective folklorist might seem like a leap, but to him it was a straight line. He says it’s the longest he’s ever lived with a character, having read the script in 2020, and he’s never walked onto a set understanding someone as well as he understood Lionel. There was excitement in that and pressure too. GLADIATOR II was a totally different physical undertaking, he explains, laughing about how in the last two weeks of shooting he was on a treadmill for three hours a day trying to lose the frame he’d built, but in terms of where he feels most at home, characters like Lionel are definitely closer to him.

Mescal has become known for roles that allow him to express vulnerability, in AFTERSUN, NORMAL PEOPLE, and Chloé Zhao’s forthcoming HAMNET, but THE HISTORY OF SOUND may be the most space he’s been given yet for that quality. Over the last five years he’s been able to become increasingly selective, and his Academy Award nomination for AFTERSUN changed the practical realities of his career. Oscar nominations are great for getting films off the ground, he says, but he hasn’t really had time to reflect on how it’s changed him as a person. He’s more comfortable knowing himself as a performer, though he’d be wary of any actor claiming they know themselves better because of success. He finds out a lot about himself while playing a character, he says, and then forgets it immediately because you’re trying to figure out something else about somebody else’s psychology.

Central to the film is the music itself, a blend of traditional American folk styles, most now obscure except for songs like “Silver Dagger”. Mescal, O’Connor and Hermanus worked with singer-songwriter Sam Amidon, whose voice blends with theirs throughout the film, alongside performances by a range of folk artists whose songs the characters record on their travels. The act of David recording and Lionel transcribing is, Mescal says, almost like a romantic exchange.