I’m very pleased to inform you all that my husband, Normal People‘s Paul Mescal, will be in Australia early next year.
He’ll be here for seven weeks to film Carmen, the modern-day imagining of one of the world’s most famous (and beloved) operas.
Mescal was announced as the male lead just yesterday, replacing my other husband, Jamie Dornan.
Technically, his role hasn’t been announced yet, but it will likely be the modern-day version of Don José. In Carmen the opera, which is set in 1830s Seville, Don José is a married soldier who falls in love (and lust) with the factory girl Carmen, who in turn is really into a bull-fighter named Escamillo. Don José is driven wild with jealousy, and ends up…. well, no spoilers. But you get the gist.
The point is: it’s an opera about lust and loose morals, and Paul Mescal will be the star. Be still my beating heart.
Carmen will be played by Melissa Barrera, who you might know from Vida (on Stan right now), but who’s had a long career in her home country of Mexico. She’s a singer, a dancer, and will get to kiss Paul Mescal right on his face.
“I’m honoured to have been cast alongside Melissa, an actor I greatly admire and it’s an incredible privilege to be working with [director] Benjamin [Millepied] on his first feature, who has put together such an impressive creative team,” Mescal said in a statement, reports Variety.
Carmen is due to begin filming in Australia on January 18 and will last seven weeks.
Exactly where they’ll be filming isn’t yet clear (independent film company Goalpost Pictures are yet to get back to me), but that’s up to seven weeks of Paul Mescal being in our country. Nine, if two-week quarantines are still a thing at that point.
Right now, Mescal is rumoured to be dating Phoebe Bridgers, a chaotic relationship that began with an Instagram live and online flirting, then saw Bridgers flying to Ireland and quarantining so they could go on a breakfast date together.
I know they’re (rumoured to be) together. But I also know, deep in my heart, that Paul Mescal is going to come to Australia, pull a Zac Efron, and get himself a normie girlfriend. And that girlfriend will be me.
