For Paul Mescal, playing a dad was the ‘greatest dress rehearsal’ for being one himself.
Paul Mescal had always dreamed of being on stage. And in the fall of 2010, the 17-year-old actor was a finalist at the local high school drama program.
But the truth was a little different.
The one-time aspiring actor was just a new dad.
‘It happened to come at the right time,’ Mescal says of being a mom. ‘I was really young and I didn’t know what to do with myself anymore. And I had this great acting teacher who told me to go for it, to do what I was good at. And that I have to make the best of this situation I’ve been dealt.’
And while Mescal may sound like the typical teenager, he’s clearly not the typical dad. The eldest of three children, he says he ‘loves’ his kids and he’s ‘pretty much’ in love with his wife, who is nine years older.
As for his acting career, the teen says, ‘I would never have done that if I was a kid. If I was a kid, I would never have thought that I would have been a drama teacher or a school principal or a police officer.’
But, Mescal also says he’d like to do more than just acting and hopes to become a musician in the future, though he has no musical aspirations yet.
And as for his role as a dad, the dad’s son is a fan of his father’s performance, and calls him the best dad he’s ever known.
Growing up in a family of five, Mescal had always loved playing with his two sisters and his baby brother since he was a baby, and says he’s glad his dad had a good acting job ‘because he could have probably lived off the money that I was making,’ he says.
And how did it happen?
Mescal had been making school plays since he was three but always as the lead. But when tragedy struck his older sister, Mescal was thrust into the role of lead singer.
‘She was in the second grade and the school decided to close down the school. They were going to put it back. And she took a couple of weeks off and went to visit my aunt. But then my dad was in the hospital. And he’s the one who took over for my sister, and he