For his first feature role since netting an Emmy nomination for Hulu series Normal People, Paul Mescal has landed in Maggie Gyllenhaal directorial debut The Lost Daughter.
The project will see The Favorite and The Crown actress Olivia Colman star as an elegant college professor on a seaside summer vacation who becomes consumed by Nina and her young daughter as she watches them on the beach, only to be overwhelmed by fearful memories of early motherhood. Forced to consider the unconventional choices she made as a young mother and the consequences they had for her family, she begins to unravel.
Mescal joins a cast that also includes Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose, Fargo); Dakota Johnson (The Peanut Butter Falcon, Bad Times at the El Royale); and Peter Sarsgaard (Jackie, Blue Jasmine).
Gyllenhaal and Charlie Dorfman will produce with Talia Kleinhendler and Osnat Handelsman-Keren of Pie Films, which worked with Gyllenhaal on drama The Kindergarten Teacher. Endeavor Content, which is handling wolrdwide sales, will finance with Dorfman’s Samuel Marshall Productions.
Mescal broke out as Connell in the series adaptation of the Sally Rooney’s popular novel Normal People. He was most recently seen in the Lisa McGee-penned TV drama The Deceived and in the music video for the Rolling Stones song “Scarlet.”
While The Lost Daughter will mark his feature film debut, Mescal’s extensive stage credits include The Great Gatsby at the Gate Theater and a January restaging of Martin McDonaugh’s The Lieutentant of Inishmore.
He is repped by CAA and the U.K.’s Curtis Brown.
