After Hamnet Oscar snub, Paul Mescal drops a surprising take on the Oscars

At a post-screening Q&A for Mary Is Missing, the short he executive produced, Paul Mescal handled a question about his Hamnet Oscars outcome with a laugh, according to Variety. He kept it simple and light as he compared his awards-season fate to that of his co-star Jessie Buckley.

“I didn’t get one, Jessie [Buckley] did … I think Oscars are great.”

The setting mattered: Mescal was there to champion a project made by and starring artists with learning disabilities, not working an awards-campaign room. Mary Is Missing puts those artists at the center of the creative process—exactly the kind of space where he seemed more interested in talking craft and opportunity than trophies.

In Hamnet—Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel—Buckley earned an Oscar nomination for playing Agnes Shakespeare, while Mescal portrayed William Shakespeare. It’s the latest stop in a run of emotionally intense turns that put him on the map with Normal People and earned him an Oscar nod for Aftersun.

Next up: McCartney

Mescal’s next major swing is playing Paul McCartney in Sam Mendes’ ambitious four-film Beatles project, slated to arrive in April 2028. The quartet portraying the Fab Four is already set:

• Paul Mescal — Paul McCartney
• Harris Dickinson — John Lennon
• Joseph Quinn — George Harrison
• Barry Keoghan — Ringo Starr

Per Variety, the actors were spotted in August recreating the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover—an early peek at the production reassembling one of music’s most famous images.

It continues a wide-ranging stretch for Mescal, who jumped from the intimate heartbreak of Aftersun to the scale of Gladiator II before returning to period drama with Hamnet. He’s also attached to Richard Linklater’s Merrily We Roll Along, a musical being filmed across roughly two decades—long enough for its cast to age alongside their characters.