Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal talk bringing Normal People's Marianne and Connell to life

1/24

If viewers of last night’s TV adaptation of Normal People needed proof the right actors were chosen for leads, they needn’t look further than the pair’s quarantine habits.

“I ring my grandparents at the same time every morning,” says Daisy Edgar-Jones, 21, who plays booksmart Marianne in the 12-part BBC Three adaptation of Sally Rooney’s award-winning novel. “I’ve been reading and doing lino-printing and have taken up an old cross-stitching project. Oh and I’ve grown some carrots!” she laughs, holding her diary up to the camera to show me her hour-by-hour lockdown schedule.

Paul Mescal, 24, who plays her cooler, sportier on-off lover Connell, laughs down the Zoom line, admitting he’s been getting up late to “shorten the day” and has “definitely not” been doing yoga at the crack of dawn like many on Instagram. “You’re throwing me under the bus here!” he teases Edgar-Jones (he calls her “Dais”) on the opposite screen, his head in his hands. “I get up late, might go for a run… Daisy’s taken up lino printing! Can I just say that [diary] is the most Daisy Edgar-Jones thing in the world?”

For any rare millennials not to have read Rooney’s universally-adored novel, Normal People follows the complicated relationship between Marianne and Connell from their high school days in a small town in Western Ireland to university at Trinity College, Dublin. At school Marianne is lonely and bullied, while Connell, her housekeeper’s son, is handsome, popular and the star of the football team.

The power balance shifts at college, where Connell feels out of place among the middle class intellectual set while Marianne has a glow-up and gains a circle of close friends. Despite their differences, the pair seem able to communicate with each other like no one else can, and Rooney writes this into the sex scenes: “if it hurts or anything, we can stop. It won’t be awkward, you just say,” Connell tells Marianne the first time they sleep together, in episode two.

“I think that’s my favourite scene in the whole series,” smiles Cold Feet star Edgar-Jones, recalling how their struggles to get her bra over her head made it into the final cut. “I was really surprised by how beautifully [that scene] was shot and how unfreaky it was to watch. I was halfway through watching it back before I realised I wasn’t wearing a top.”

The pair, who first met at a chemistry read and immediately thought each other looked right for the part, were only a week into rehearsals when they had their first sex scene, but “we just had to get used to it,” says Mescal, who was just as exposed as Edgar-Jones in terms of nudity on screen during the series. Ita O’Brien, an intimacy director who worked on Netflix’s Sex Education, was recruited to ensure they felt comfortable and the pair grew so close with the crew that fits of giggles were common during intimate scenes.

Star-crossed lovers: The series chronicles Marianne and Connell's budding romance
BBC/Element Pictures/Hulu

“It became known that around 5pm every day we would get hysterical for no reason,” laughs Edgar-Jones recalling one scene in the trailer where she and Mescal make eye contact while passing in a corridor. “I got Paul in trouble because I had to be like ‘I’m so sorry, Paul’s making me laugh’.”

Filming took place in Ireland, Sweden and Italy over about five months last year, “plus about five months of stressing before it started,” jokes Mescal, who grew up in County Kildare and is a keen footballer like Connell. This is his first major screen role and he asked to meet Rooney, 29, for coffee in Dublin after being cast (by this point, Edgar-Jones was down to the final five). “I was completely terrified but she was so generous and verified any instincts I had about Connell. It wasn’t like I had a huge amount of questions because all the answers were there in the book, but she gave me her blessing and it was a really nice confidence boost going into shooting.”

Islington-born Edgar-Jones was cast later and prepared for the role by reading every book Marianne has, including the first volume of Proust. The actress’ mother is from northern Ireland so she’d been doing the accent “for years” but she spent weeks watching videos of Rooney to perfect her posher, “precise” County Mayo dialect ( the drama is set in neighbouring Sligo).. She read the book five times before shooting and about ten times after that, and though there was a lot of pressure to do Rooney’s storytelling justice, she and Mescal found they got lost in their “own little thing” and forgot about the hype. They are grateful for the intensity of filming in hindsight: the final week of shoots wrapped up just a week before the country went into lockdown.

BBC/Element Pictures/Hulu

Since then, the pair have been sharing quarantine binge tips (Just Kids by Patti Smith, Succession, Euphoria) while isolating in London: Mescal in Clapton (he recently moved in with actress India Mullen who plays Marianne’s friend Peggy in the show); and Edgar-Jones nearby in Wood Green with her boyfriend, the Game of Thrones actor Tom Varey, and two friends (“so lots of board games”).

Edgar-Jones, Varey and Mescal went out for dinner before filming and the actress has already sat her boyfriend down to previews: “he was gritting his teeth [during the sex scenes] but at least he’s seen it now.” Both hers and Mescal’s parents have watched too now, but “it’s my grandparents I’m most worried about,” laughs Edgar-Jones. That’ll be a fun topic for the morning phone call.

All 12 episodes of Normal People are now available on BBC iPlayer.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in