Two is company, and three is a crowd—though Joe Alwyn, Paul Mescal and another fellow actor have a different name for their trio.
Joe and Paul, who each starred in Sally Rooney TV adaptations, gave insight into their exclusive group chat during a Variety's Actors on Actors interview Dec. 15, as well as the identity of their crew's third member.
"So what's the name of the WhatsApp group that we're in?" Paul asked, with Joe responding, "It's the Tortured Man Club, I think. It's me, you—and Andrew Scott started the group."
As for who texts the most in the chat, Paul put Andrew—best known for Fleabag and Sherlock—at the forefront.
"He's just on it every day," Paul—who is dating Phoebe Bridgers—revealed. "He's just on it by himself."
Joe added, "Just messaging himself good mornings."
Group chats aside, the two also opened up about their experiences with anxiety during the candid conversation. Joe broached the subject first, recalling a previous conversation they had on the topic before asking Paul how he's navigated getting "outside of anxiety in order to do the job."
"It's that cursed feeling of, once you feel like it's disappearing, it comes back and hits you like a ton of bricks," Paul answered. "But I was talking to somebody about that. They said, 'I don't think it's ever going to leave you, because it's a personality type.'"
Diving further into the discussion, the Normal People actor detailed how he copes with such feelings.
"But for me, it's trying to use that anxiety or fear or fear of failure—repurposing that to be like, 'What I'm doing matters to me," Paul said. "Might not matter to everybody, but it matters to me at that moment."
In response to Paul asking him how he endures anxiety, Joe—who is dating Taylor Swift—said it's "interesting and tricky."
"Because it gets to a point where there's a degree to which nerves are completely inevitable and can also be helpful," Joe said. "But at the same time, there's a danger—and I've certainly felt this in the last couple of years—where that can start to take away some of the pleasure and the fun of doing it. So recently it's been a rethink: Going forward, just jumping in in the same way but caring less in the right way."
Read more of their conversation here.