Earlier this year, fans speculated that Taylor Swift‘s The Tortured Poets Department got its title inspiration from ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn’s group chat with fellow actors Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, aka “The Tortured Man Club.” And while the jury is still out on whether or not that’s true, Scott did recently set the record straight about their text thread, which apparently never lasted long in the first place.
“I think there were three texts, like, ‘Hey, guys,’” he told Variety in an interview published Wednesday (May 22). “You know those groups that you set up, and they just collapse.”
The Ripley star also explained why they gave their convo such a melancholy name, noting that the chat was created just as Alwyn had been cast as the solemn Nick Conway in Hulu’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends. Mescal starred as the anxiety-ridden Connell Waldron in another Rooney-inspired series, Normal People.
“They were about to play these tortured characters, and I had played a tortured character in Fleabag,” Scott told the publication. “It wasn’t about our own characteristics!”
The interview comes about a year and a half after Scott sat down with Mescal for Variety‘s “Actors on Actors” video series, during which the All of Us Strangers costars spoke about their “Tortured Man Club” group chat with Alwyn. When Swift later announced her latest album’s title at the 2024 Grammys, fans were quick to draw a connection.
Speaking of Tortured Poets — which has since spent a full month at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — Scott revealed that he’s had the project on rotation. “Taylor’s new album is sensational!” he said in the interview. “I texted her yesterday to say how amazing it is.”
“I think she is just a force of nature, just an extraordinary human,” he added, noting that his favorite track on the LP is “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.” “This album is really, really amazing.”
