Normal People’s Paul Mescal channelling his inner Pavarotti is essential lockdown viewing
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- Lauren Geall
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It turns out Normal People star Paul Mescal isn’t just a talented actor and chain wearer: he can belt out some solid notes, too.
Normal People has captured the nation’s hearts in lockdown. The BBC Three adaptation of Sally Rooney’s bestselling novel has broken records on BBC iPlayer, receiving a massive 16 million streaming requests in its first week.
The story of Connell and Marianne has simultaneously warmed and broken the hearts of people everywhere (the emotional rollercoaster you’ll go on while watching this show is no joke, people). You only need to look at the internet’s obsession with a certain chain to see how massive this show has become; the Instagram account @connellschain (managed by Stylist’s own Billie Bhatia) now has over 120,000 followers.
One thing’s for certain: the nation is hungry for every bit of Normal People content they can consume. So when we heard that Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones were making an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, it’s safe to say we were very excited.
During the show, which aired on Friday, we learnt about Mescal’s obsession with opera singer Pavarotti, and even got to see a clip of him channelling the artist from a balcony in Italy.
“What’s the deal with you and Pavarotti?” Norton asked, referencing a video clip he was preparing to show. “Was it on your last night in Italy? It was quite a big night out?”
Laughing to himself over video link, Mescal explained: “I have been a big fan of Pavarotti and around that time I had watched the Pavarotti documentary and had fallen viciously in love with the man.”
Jumping in to explain the situation, Edgar-Jones added: “We booked this Airbnb with a balcony and Paul did a bit from it. And I got hold of the video.”
The video clip in question was, to say the least, incredible (we didn’t know it was possible to fall even more in love with this man). As it turns out, Mescal has a pretty amazing singing voice – and his Pavarotti impression is pretty damn accurate.
Unsurprisingly, fans of the show were obsessed with this surprise revelation, and took to Twitter to praise his performance.
“I just watched a video of @mescal_paul singing Pavarotti on a Roman balcony and then he got the giggles seeing it on zoom with earbuds on that look like they’re from 1999,” one wrote. “What a damn delight he is.”
“Is anyone else really impressed with how well @mescal_paul hit the notes on that Pavarotti footage?!” another added.
“Hey @mescal_paul, can we call you Paul Pavarotti from now on?!” wrote a third.
If one thing’s for sure, the internet’s obsession with Paul Mescal isn’t going away anytime soon (and we’re 100% OK with that).
Image: BBC