Paul Mescal skyrocketed to stardom at the peak of the COVID-19 crisis, when everyone was huddled in their home looking for something new to watch, and Hulu’s Normal People filled that void, due in large part to his performance as the charismatic but conflicted Connell Waldron. And with that success came a flood of offers for what the Irish actor should do as his follow-up.

Mescal picked two independent films, God’s Creatures and Aftersun, both of which are debuting at the Cannes Film Festival. And when we sit down to talk in a serene little garden in Cannes after his first screening of God’s Creatures, it’s clear that he plans to stick with independent film for as much of his career as he can. Could he have taken on a big studio movie or even a superhero film? Sure, there were offers. “There’s always some form of a temptation,” he says. “But I don’t know. I’m 26. I don’t have a mortgage. I don’t have kids. I want to make films that I can sit in and watch and be incredibly proud.”

According to him, he’s driven by a deep desire to be proud of the work he takes on, saying he finds that mostly in independent film. Plus, he’s a little afraid of what he’d do if he did a project that he wasn’t happy with. “I think that a lot of it is motivated by fear as well,” he says. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to have, say, made a film that you’re not proud of, and you then have to do this [press] and you have to talk about it. The kind of duality of that scares me.”

Since the frenzy around Normal People, Mescal, who made his feature film debut opposite Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter, has spent the past year or so out of the spotlight, but he seems excited to be stepping back into it to promote these two projects. “I’m incredibly proud of the films and the choices that I’ve made,” he says. “There’s something incredibly satisfying about that—like choosing things for the right reasons.”

The first right reason came along in God's Creatures, which played in the Directors’ Fortnight section in Cannes. The A24 drama, directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, is set in a small fishing village where Mescal’s character, Brian O’Hara, returns to his family after spending some unknown number of years in Australia. When Brian is accused of attacking a young woman in town, his mother (Emily Watson) struggles with the choice of protecting her son or telling the truth.

“I often think about what my acting teacher said: ‘It’s not your job to be moral, it’s your job to invest into this character’s life and find what motivates this person to be good, to be bad, to be indifferent,’” Mescal says. “I like the craft that goes into something that is far away from you. And I think that if we were all playing characters that we thought were good, or just, or heroic, films would be boring.”

Brian is introduced as a charming and dedicated son who had some previous issues with his father but has returned to hopefully relaunch the family’s oyster business. Mescal says the toughest part of the role was “not judging Brian. It’s like a real head fuck when you’re upset for him…I always viewed it like Brian has got to see himself as the victim of the story for it to be interesting. So that was hard.”

If there’s a through line in Mescal’s work so far, it’s creating characters who are a bit unknowable. “I’m definitely attracted to, in a very bold sense, characters that think and don’t say, or feel and don’t say. I think that’s also interesting to watch.I think it leaves room for an audience to project something onto them,” he says. In his other Cannes project, Aftersun, he plays a young father who takes his daughter on vacation to a seaside resort, but in between their moments of fun, it’s clear he is also still trying to grow up and figure out who he wants to be. The project, which is directed by Charlotte Wells and played in the Critics’ Week section in Cannes, allowed Mescal to play a father for the first time, albeit a young one who is still finding his way. “His ambition for himself is kind of what devastates me,” he says. “It’s like you see somebody talking about their life, but the audience knows that that’s not true. And that really messes with me.”

Mescal, who signed with CAA just before Normal People was released, picked both of these projects soon after the series became a hit. “They’re both troubled men, I think. And they manifest their kind of discomfort in the world in very different ways,” he says, adding that “there’s a sadness to that that I’m attracted to.” Mescal, not so melancholy in person, jokes that maybe that’s his niche: “sad, repressed men.”

For now, Mescal says he’s going to focus on independent film and signing on to projects that he’s passionate about. He has already wrapped work on a modern reimagining of Carmen, in which he plays male lead Aidan, and has a film lined up to shoot this summer that he can't quite talk about yet. He then has “another thing” also shooting later this year. It’s not a film, but he can’t talk about that yet either.

Mescal, who’s spending his time between Los Angeles and London, cites Michelle Williams, Adam Driver, Joaquin Phoenix, and Michael Shannon as actors he admires for the way they’ve navigated their careers, but adds that he’s not naive enough to think that every project he ever does is going to be a lauded independent film, or even an independent film at all. “I think the only thing that you can control is what you say yes and no to. And after that, people will decide if they’re fed up with you or not,” he says. “I’m going to keep trying to be motivated by the things that are motivating me now. I definitely want to be acting for as long as I can walk.”