No./11 How do you top Normal People?
Lenny Abrahamson returns to the Sally Rooney-verse with CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS
LENNY ABRAHAMSON HADN’T anticipated that Normal People would turn out the way it did. The adaptation of Sally Rooney’s emotionally charged novel became the BBC’S most-streamed show of 2020, earned international acclaim, and scored Abrahamson his first Emmy nomination for his work directing six out of the 12 episodes.
“It defied our most optimistic predictions,” he tells Empire. Now he’s doing another Rooney adaptation, her debut novel Conversations With Friends, and the pressure is on. “The expectations are always there, even if it isn’t connected to a big success,” he says. “It’s like, will we do it justice?”
Where Normal People was a laser-focused love story, Conversations is bigger in scope. Set in modern-day Dublin, it follows student Frances (Alison Oliver) as she navigates relationships with best friend Bobbi (Sasha Lane), secret lover Nick (Joe Alwyn), and his wife Melissa (Jemima Kirke). With the story told entirely through Frances’ eyes, casting the right person was crucial — and an opportunity to, as with Normal People’s Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-jones, find an unknown actor and propel them to stardom. Enter Alison Oliver, a young, Cork-born breakout star who makes her screen debut on the show. “The more people we read her with, the more perfect she was,” Abrahamson recalls. Yet only one other actor could provide exactly the chemistry needed with Oliver to make Frances and Nick’s story tick. “There was so much soulfulness in him,” Abrahamson says of Alwyn’s audition for the role. “It’s an older man and a younger woman, and in the novel, the power-balance can flip the less conventional way. It’s often Frances who’s the active force. Joe and Alison really found that.”
Normal People broke new ground in its depiction of sex, helped by a pioneering approach to intimacy coordination. As Conversations With Friends also digs deep into themes of sex and affection, Abrahamson again worked with expert Ita O’brien “on how to make actors feel safe whilst also giving them creative ownership of what’s happening,” he explains. “Having gone through the process with Normal People,
that was something that felt really solid going into Conversations.”
So the chemistry is there, the intimacy is there — but is it possible to recapture the same quiet, melancholy tone that made Normal People
so mesmerising? It turns out that Abrahamson wasn’t really trying to, aiming for an “affinity” with the 2020 show rather than creating an outright copy. “Conversations is that bit gnarlier as a story,” Abrahamson explains.“there’s clearly a family resemblance between the shows, but I feel like they’re cousins rather than siblings.” No matter how distant the relation, we’re excited to meet the new member of the clan.
CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS WILL AIR ON BBC THREE IN MAY