More secrets and tears for ‘normal people’

It seems these star-crossed lovers have been in our lives for much longer (although for anyone who has already watched the full show on BBC Three, then that’s true).

Based on the bestseller by Sally Rooney, Normal People follows the relationship between two young people from a small town in the west of Ireland. Connell is the good-looking athletic student who everyone wants to be. Marianne is the intimidating loner who actively avoids others and questions authority.

Back in episode one, the two came into each other’s orbit through their mothers (one works at the other’s house) and soon, a deep connection had grown between the teenagers – one that they could not stop but they were determined to conceal from others.

However, that was back then. In the present, the pair have moved on to college. Marianne is on a student exchange programme in Sweden for a year and while her break-up with Jamie has cost her some friends, she is still in touch with Connell and Joanna. Word of her sex life with photographer Lukas makes its way back to Dublin, and when Connell bumps into Peggy at a party, she asks him about the gossip and whether things were like that with him and Marianne.

The drama has proved a big success for the BBC – but then it has a pretty good pedigree. It is directed by Hettie Macdonald (whose credits include Beautiful Thing, Doctor Who and the TV version of Howards End) and Lenny Abrahamson (who won an Oscar nomination for 2015 Brie Larson movie Room).

But a director is only as good as the actors they are working with. As director Lenny Abrahamson says: “I think Paul and Daisy are remarkably good fits for Marianne and Connell, and although readers will come to the adaptation with pictures in their heads of the characters from the novel, I think their performances are so compelling that it quickly becomes harder to see these characters as anything other than these two actors.”

Speaking of the two main characters, what draws Marianne and Connell together?

Daisy Edgar-Jones: “Probably familiarity. They have both come from Sligo to Trinity, it’s a big change and they know each other’s context. At times they are toxic and don’t communicate. But when they do, they speak to each other in a way that they can’t speak to anyone else, and it’s rare to find those people. They also really fancy each other which is probably a key reason!”

Paul Mescal continues: “There’s an instinctive kind of connection that they have, that if the characters were talking themselves, they wouldn’t ever be able to articulate to each other properly. It’s easy for us as Paul and Daisy to discuss Connell and Marianne, because we can communicate – that’s not something Connell and Marianne are good at doing with each other.

”And the title. What does ‘Normal People’ mean to you? Mescal:“No one is normal, we are all different. There’s no right way to be.”

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