Paul Mescal and Ariana Grande’s video interview for Variety’s Actors On Actors series has been released – and we’re pleased to see that it didn’t take the Wicked actor long to ask her fellow performer about his history of musical theatre.
The interview begins with the Gladiator II star voicing how impressed he was with Ariana’s performance in Wicked, questioning: “What can’t you do?”
“Coming from you!” she replied, admitting she’d “seen you sing on YouTube”.
Since Paul’s rise to fame in Normal People, videos of him performing in community productions of Les Misérables and Phantom Of The Opera have racked up tens of thousands of views on YouTube.
“Oh we’re starting there, are we?” he remarked, with Ariana responding: “I have to start there because… I’m sorry, I’m a musical theatre nerd and I saw you sing Les Mis.”
“With the dodgy mutton chops?” he asked, before admitting: “I definitely share the musical theatre bug, but I feel like I cannot be the person to start that because we’re talking about [you in Wicked].”
He recalled: “Phantom Of The Opera was my beginning, and then I think I really wanted to be in musical theatre, to begin with. And then I realised that I couldn’t really dance. So that avenue was slowly but surely taken away from me.
“I just gravitated more towards the Phantoms, the Les Mis, the Miss Saigons. And then, realised that I probably didn’t have the best voice. And then acting was the avenue that I went down. But I just love the act of being on stage, and the fusion of acting and music.”
Later in the interview, Ariana told Paul: “You claim that you don’t think you can dance, but if you can do what’s in this film – I’m telling you! This has to be so much harder than that?”
“Oh I can’t!” he insisted. “There’s proof! Why do you think I was playing Javert? Famous dance breaks!”
Watch the pair’s full interview for yourself below:
Despite Paul’s insistence his voice is not “the best”, he’s already turned his hand to movie musicals once before, sharing the screen with Melissa Barrera in a modern reimagining of Carmen.
He is also shooting a new adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, alongside Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein.
The film takes place over a number of decades, and is being filmed as such so the actors age in time with their characters, in a similar vain to the film Boyhood.