I bought her this. It cost me ten quid, plus my Johnny Rotten t-shirt. Your mother knew quite the rebel. I was studying in Paris when I met her. I hopped on a train and followed her to Greece… quite spontaneously.
I had this woman who said she had a naked picture of me, a screenshot from the show, as the wallpaper on her phone. And it was mad to me — like, she wasn’t doing it to be incendiary, I think she was genuinely trying to tell me she was a big fan but it just felt very weird. I didn’t like it. When Normal People came out, the attention was a bit affronting, it was like, “This is f***ing crazy.” Now I’m a bit more comfortable with it. I realised, like, this can consume me and I can be pissed off with every person who has a naked picture of me stashed somewhere or I can just let it go. It’s the internet. The internet is this evil f***ing entity and it has so much power but it’s an exhausting hill to try and die on because you’re not going to win. Paul Mescal photographed by Steve Harnacke for ES Magazine, 2023
