Paul Mescal told drama teachers he was mugged to cover up being injured playing GAA

The Normal People star made his first American talk show debut last night in front of a live audience on NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers, having previously done such programmes during lockdown over zoom.

Wearing an unusual 70s style flared open neck shirt under his suit, the Kildare man opened to host Seth Meyers in New York about his time playing Gaelic football and how it impacted on his drama course in Dublin’s Trinity College.

Asked by the curious American TV host what Gaelic football is like, Paul smiled: “Chaos, pure chaos

“It’s basically like a mix between rugby and soccer, but is just brutal. Well rugby is pretty brutal.

“You represent like your parish or where you come from. It’s like nonprofessional, so it’s like very spirited I’d say.”

Meyers jibed “Is there lots of fighting?”.

“It depends on which town you’re playing against,” laughed the 26-yearold Irishman, who admitted: “Yeah I like my town”.

He added: “I played for Maynooth, and Kildare, my county. Like a geography lesson.”

Paul then revealed how he suffered a serious injury of the GAA field.

“I broke my nose and my jaw. I broke my jaw two days before starting my final year in drama school,” he recollects.

“I was like ‘I’m probably going to give it a break for the last year’, because I found out they don’t really go hand in hand. You can’t really act with a broken jaw.

“They say you’re not allowed to play any sport because it’s like bad for your body and stuff, and I was like ‘it will be fine’.

“I was face to face with my acting teachers and they were like ‘what’s wrong’.

“I was like, ‘this is so weird, I got mugged at work.’ Yeah, nightmare.

“So, I spent the four weeks in rehearsal just kind of like rehearing.”