Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor on Restraint, Music, and Personifying Love in ‘The History of Sound’ [VIDEO INTERVIEW]
Some epic love stories are remembered for the ages. Others are restrained by the age in which they unfold. In The History of Sound, Oliver Hermanus’s achingly tender adaptation, Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor embody David and Lionel, two men who fall for each other in 1917 but can’t live openly in their truth. Their journey across America, recording folk songs at the dawn of a new century, becomes as much about memory and longing as it is about love.
Mescal fresh off his Oscar-nominated turn in Aftersun and leading Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II, and O’Connor, a Golden Globe and Emmy winner for The Crown, this project represents a return to intimate, emotionally restrained storytelling.
When I spoke with them, Mescal and O’Connor lit up describing the scene that crystallizes their characters’ connection. David sits at the piano, unaware that Lionel is listening. When Lionel begins to sing, the spell is cast. “I love watching the scene where we meet for the first time,” Mescal insisted.
O’Connor quickly agreed, noting the deliberate craft behind the sequence. “The way we shot that was very moving because we revisit that moment at the end of the movie as a memory, so we shot it in two different ways, in two different versions of it. And not knowing the significance of that was quite moving.”
For Mescal, that combination of subtle restraint and epic romanticism elevated the material. He went on to share which scene was one of his favorite scenes he has ever read in a script, and describes the pressure and challenges that came along with that.
That blend of craft and emotion, quiet music, unspoken longing, and the ache of memory, feels destined to resonate with universal audiences. With The History of Sound, Mescal and O’Connor are carrying forward a lineage of queer love stories on screen that don’t shout, but hum, vibrating with emotion long after the final frame.
The dynamic duo also shed light on their personal views on love, what David and Lionel’s relationship would look like today, and their future musical aspirations. Watch the full interview above.
MUBI will release The History of Sound in select theaters on September 12 and wide on September 19.
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