When Taylor Swift announced her latest album The Tortured Poets Department, fans were quick to theorize the title could be a nod at the singer’s ex Joe Alwyn and his similarly named group chat with actors Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal a.k.a. “The Tortured Man Club.” Though, this theory has never been confirmed (or denied), Andrew Scott recently addressed the status of the group chat.
“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 satirical 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.
