After “Gladiator,” Paul Mescal wants to continue his collaboration with “Aftersun” writer/director Charlotte Wells. And then he wants to continue it like eight more times.
In an interview for a GQ cover story, Mescal shared that he hopes for “a De Niro–Scorsese relationship” with the filmmaker. Childhood pals Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese have worked together on 10 feature films since 1973; De Niro also has sourced material for Scorsese and suggested adaptations of “Silence” and other novels. It’s a high bar.
Wells made her feature debut in 2022 with the semi-autobiographical “Aftersun,” for which Mescal was Oscar-nominated for basically playing Wells’ real-life father. In the film, which is set in the late 1990s, Mescal’s character travels with his 11-year-old daughter Sophie (Frankie Corio) to Turkey to celebrate his 31st birthday.
The “Gladiator II” actor previously told IndieWire that indies like “Aftersun” are rare.
“We got to make it and nobody knew of it,” Mescal said. “I don’t think that happens a lot anymore. I love a blockbuster as much as the next person, but my only point is that we have to be careful about just leaving a bit more space for films like ‘Aftersun’ to break out, films like ‘Close’ to break out. I really don’t think I’m snobby about it. It’s actually to do with just being worried that that space [for independent film] is being encroached upon. And if we don’t keep the ecosystem balanced, we’re just gonna have one kind of film.”
He later added to Vanity Fair, “To be part of one of the films this year that operated in the space [at the Oscars] — the films that I’m most excited to see every year — was really satisfying. Weirdly those are the things that I’ve always dreamt about. To A, have something that gets into these things, but B, to get in across the board and for it to be with somebody like Charlotte [for her] first film, it’s just like — yeah.”
As for Wells’ upcoming slate, she told IndieWire in 2023 that her future projects will “always be personal in some ways.”
“It’s easier to be more personal, to give more of yourself, if there is a veneer of fiction that is more obvious than here, where there is not a character that is so easy to draw a straight line between them and me,” Wells said. “But it’s always going to be personal. I’m always going to be using film to express something of myself. This [‘Aftersun’] is probably as ‘actually completely about my life’ as it’s ever going to get. But you know, never say never.”
Wells has not yet announced her next project since “Aftersun.”
