Paul Mescal Wants a ‘De Niro–Scorsese Relationship’ with ‘Aftersun’ Director Charlotte Wells
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.
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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.”
In fact, Mescal even said that he hoped to have a working partnership with Wells that mirrored Saoirse Ronan and Greta Gerwig’s collaborations. The duo worked together on “Little Women” and “Ladybird”; Ronan was also going to have a “Barbie” cameo before scheduling conflicts arose.
“That’s my grand plan,” Mescal said of continuing his work with Wells. “It’s like getting on the ground floor with Charlotte and seeing if you can be the Saoirse Ronan to her Greta Gerwig. But I’m sure she’ll have hundreds of people queuing up to work with her.”
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.”
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