Paul Mescal set to star in Mag­gie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter

Actor on the rise Paul Mescal won over hordes of new fans – many of them cor­po­re­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the heart-eyes cat emo­ji – with his dream­boat turn in the TV minis­eries Nor­mal Peo­ple ear­li­er this year. With this DiCapri­ov­ian lev­el of instant ado­ra­tion, it was only a mat­ter of time until the stage vet­er­an turned screen idol moved up to the big time, and now Tinseltown’s come a‑calling.

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter has today con­firmed the news that Mescal will make his fea­ture film debut in the upcom­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller The Lost Daugh­ter, the direc­to­r­i­al debut of Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal. He’s the lat­est addi­tion to an already stacked cast that includes Jessie Buck­ley (mak­ing waves right now as the star of Char­lie Kauf­man​‘s I’m Think­ing of End­ing Things), Peter Sars­gaard, Olivia Col­man, and Dako­ta John­son.

Col­man will lead the film, play­ing what’s been referred to as an ​“ele­gant col­lege pro­fes­sor on a sea­side sum­mer vaca­tion,” where she makes the acquain­tance of a woman named Nina (unclear at present as to whether this will be Buck­ley or John­son) and her young daugh­ter. Watch­ing them play on the beach sends her down a rab­bit hole of mem­o­ry about her ear­ly days of moth­er­hood, and by the time she comes out the oth­er side, she will have devel­oped a more ten­u­ous rela­tion­ship to her sanity.

Though Gyllenhaal’s assumed the role of pro­duc­er more and more as of late (see: her recent vehi­cle The Kinder­garten Teacher), she’s an untest­ed direc­to­r­i­al tal­ent, and actors mak­ing the jump to the oth­er side of the cam­era always elic­it a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism. Same goes for Mescal, who hasn’t yet built up a fil­mog­ra­phy show­cas­ing a range, though sure­ly Gyl­len­haal cast him for what she knows he can do.

The exclu­sive doesn’t make any men­tion of a time­line for pro­duc­tion, which makes sense, with the indus­try still large­ly fig­ur­ing out pro­to­cols for safe shoot­ing dur­ing these days of pan­dem­ic pre­cau­tion. But make no mis­take, this will be a shoo-in for Sun­dance or Toron­to a few years from now – just wait.