Saoirse Ronan knew Foe costar Paul Mescal was the real deal after his Irish sausage commercial

Saoirse Ronan knew Paul Mescal would land meaty Hollywood roles after seeing him in an Irish sausage commercial.

In Mescal's Harper's Bazaar cover story published Wednesday, Ronan revealed that the first time she saw the Oscar-nominated Aftersun star act was in his 2018 commercial for Irish sausage brand Denny. "He'll kill me for mentioning it, but — I'm not actually joking — that was the first time I went, 'Oh, who's that guy?'" Ronan said. "He's really good."

Mescal and Ronan are set to headline the upcoming sci-fi thriller film Foe, an adaptation of Iain Reid's 2018 novel of the same name, out Oct. 6. They play a husband and wife living on a secluded farm whose lives are upended when a stranger shows up at their doorstep with a startling proposal. Before his turn in the sci-fi film, however, Mescal played a teenager inspired to see the world after his father informs him that the sons of Denny founder, Henry Denny, were globe-trotters who taught people how to cure bacon.

At the time, Mescal was a recent drama school graduate with "no money," he told BBC Radio 4 earlier this year (via Insider). "If I ever feel like I get too big for my boots, it kind of pops up somewhere that we shouldn't forget that I was promoting sausages when I got out of drama school," Mescal said, recalling of how he booked the gig: "My agent was like, 'I don't know how you'll deal with this, but we've got a sausage advert that you can go on.' I was like, absolutely. I need to pay my rent."

It was quite the experience, Mescal said, noting that he ate many sausages that day because it felt "rude" to spit out the meat after each take. "They do this thing where they come around with like a bucket that you're supposed to spit them out into, and that just felt rude to me," he said. "But I learned my lesson that it's better to do that than have to eat 15 sausages in a morning."

Check out Mescal's sausage commercial above.

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