Yes he’s a Gucci ambassador, yes he’s coming to a big screen near you as the incredibly ripped Lucias in Gladiator II, but Paul Mescal? He’s still just a normal person when it comes to how he spends his free time. Well, a normal late-20s hipster who makes most female late-20s hipsters audibly shriek whenever he’s spotted in the wild — which is a lot.
He may be Irish, but having settled in the city in 2020 (a time when he delighted fans with his ritual of running around London parks in his short-shorts) he’s become a bona fide London boy. And he’s proved he has pretty good taste when it comes to his favourite haunts, from dive pubs to members’ clubs. He’s also been spotted at Michelin-star BRAT — in fact, on the same weekend as he attended the Glastonbury Charli XCX set... It seems he took those calls for a Brat summer literally.
If you want to live your London life à la Paul (and it’s highly possible you could run into him seeing as he’s got a while until he returns to the stage in A Streetcar Named Desire); we’ve done the sleuthing so you don’t have to. Here’s how to do the cold season like the Normal People star.
Whisky sours at hipster pubs
While he appeared in A Street Car Named Desire in 2023 at the Almeida Theatre in N1, The Old Queen’s Head seemed to become Paul’s local. Rumours swirled that it was where the County Kildare lad went to try his luck of the Irish, leading a journalist from The Fence to infiltrate a night to see if she could find him on the pull there. She didn’t, but he’s still said to be a regular.
Even if Paul isn’t there, the pub still offers good times in the form of a very silly Tuesday night quiz, friday night DJ sets, and a decent burger menu. Paul has previously said his favourite drink is a Whisky Sour, which the venue serves with Japanese whisky.
Also on the list of boozers where Paul has been sneakily captured by fellow punters for TikTok or by paps, are East London hipster favourite The Spurstowe Arms near London Fields, and The Cavendish in Marylebone, where he was seen with a mystery woman last year.
Small plate date nights
Some argue the small plate trend is dead, but Paul is clearly still advocating for sharing — and his restaurant of choice is BRAT, the Michelin-star Spanish restaurant in Shoreditch. In summer he was seen there with singer Gracie Abrams, with TMZ reporting that they ordered a bunch of its popular dishes to share.
The All of Us Strangers star has previously been quoted saying he loves the anchovies with bread and butter, so add that to your order. Though be warned — it’s notoriously hard to book a table at BRAT, even with the second outpost in London Fields’ Climpson’s Arches.
Smoke breaks at a bougie bars
Vaping? So last year. Cigs are officially back in 2024 and even during his Gladiator training Paul was partial. He told Esquire while he was getting ripped for the movie last year that he’d “set the tone early with Tim [his trainer],” telling him “I smoke and drink and that’s not going to change.” So yes, he has to step outside and find a good stoop once in a while. And given he was not-so-long-ago papped having a cig with none other than Natalie Portman at 69 Colebrooke Row in Islington, who’s to say he won’t be there again ready to share a light?
The speakeasy style cocktail bar named after its address was once known as The Bar With No Name and has a reputation for serving top tier cocktails at speed. So it’s worth a visit for the mixology alone. Whisky sours all round!
Paul Mescal & Natalie Portman in London. pic.twitter.com/rM1evzSNxn
— cinesthetic. (@TheCinesthetic) May 30, 2024
Raving like a normal person
Mescal seems just as comfortable among hoi polloi as he does on the red carpet. In May the star was with some pals at The Mildmay Social club in Stoke Newington when a speed dating night was taking place. Mescal is said to have gamely joined in and the whole gang then reportedly decamped to Dalston Superstore, the famous gay club on Kingsland High Street, and danced into the early hours. According to someone who was there, Mescal then had all the speed daters back to his flat for an afterparty. The people’s princess.
Raving like a not-so-normal person
Paul has been spotted at Camden’s KOKO several times. Party people have seen him join the throngs on the main dance floor for a gig in the past, though you’ll mostly find him in the members’ club, House of KOKO. He has been photographed attending events including his sister Nell’s EP launch a few months ago, and he and his castmates celebrated the last night of Streetcar Named Desire at the venue after warming up at the Groucho Club.
Our source tells us that of the many rooms in the maze-like club, Paul can usually be found holding court in the cosy booths in The Vinyl Room, a hidden space with personal bartenders.
Mescal is also a fan of celeb hangout The Chiltern Firehouse, where a margarita at their bar, The Ladder Shed, comes in at a cool £35. He partied there until the early hours after the Baftas this year, and stopped in again for a knees up with Jude Bellingham and Idris Elba over summer.
Jaunts in short-shorts
During lockdown, Paul was regularly spotted in his favourite thigh-skimming Gaelic football shorts and Adidas trainers — sans top — running around East London and Hyde Park. And more recently, rumours around his dating antics inspired his fans to take up jogging too. To explain: his good guy reputation was a little marred by a string of TikToks claiming he has a habit of sprinting away from women the morning after the night before, after he invites them to take a walk at the park. Cue hysteria from London’s women wanting to up their run game in case they needed to “catch him”.
Mescal recently responded to the hysteria in an interview with GQ, saying the rumours had come out when he was with his family at Christmas and that as they are: “Categorically untrue,” him and his two siblings were “laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing.”
Ok, so that might not be the motivation you need to top up your Strava trophy case, but you could still see Paul working on those thighs in East London.
Of course, he does move slower as well. He told Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg, “I love walking, a good long walk is romantic to me. Simple pleasures, I’m a simple man.” And indeed, he is regularly seen ambling around central London with his shades on, looking the picture of happy go lucky.
So run or walk, your choice: just be sure you’ve got your short-shorts on. And when his aren’t Gucci boxers they’re usually from Irish lad favourite O’Neill’s, which retail at just £16.
