56 ELLE.COM/UK^ April 2020
Elle UPFRONT
Words: Becky Burgum. Photography: Alamy, Gett y Images.UNDERGROUND ART
AS ART IST LUCY McKENZIE TAKES OVER SUDBURY TOWN
T UBE STATION L ATER THIS YE AR, WE HIGHL IGHT T HE
BEST ART- ADORNED CONCOURSES AROUND THE WORLDGo see...
Kiyevskaya metro station,
Moscow Florentine marble
and granite mosaics tell
Russia and Ukraine’s
complicated history.
Toledo metro station, Naples
Themed around water
and light, this piece was
commissioned by former
Venice Biennale director,
Achille Bonito Oliva.
Olaias station,
LisbonStep inside a
giant kaleidoscope
of harlequin-style
stained glass.
Bur Juman station,
DubaiLED ‘jellyfish’
chandeliers hang from
the ceiling of Dubai’s
busiest station.
Frantically filming her audition tape between shooting intense
death scenes for the BBC sci-fi drama War of the Worlds, a week
later Edgar- Jones found herself taking an early morning flight to
Dublin for a ‘chemistry test’ with Mescal (‘it was the most scared
I’ve ever been’). ‘I was totally in awe of Sally, because she’s so
incredibly talented,’ she says of meeting the author, Rooney.
It didn’t take long before she
developed a love for the Irish
filming locations Dublin, Sligo and
Enniskerry. ‘The nightlife in Dublin
is brilliant – it’s much better than
London,’ she adds. To nail the
accent in less than two weeks before
shooting, Londoner Edgar-Jones
spent hours chatting to her Irish cast
mates and working with an accent
coach. ‘I listened to Sally’s accent
a lot,’ she says, before rolling her ‘Rs’
and explaining the subtle differences
between the word ‘don’t’ in a County
Sligo lilt and a Mayo one.
Growing up as an only child
in Muswell Hill, in a ‘really loving
family’, Edgar- Jones says her
childhood couldn’t have been
more different to Marianne’s solitary,
troubled experience. She caught the acting bug young, moving
from her role as a hen in a carol concert at age six to joining
the National Youth Theatre at 14, followed by minor TV roles in
Outnumbered, Silent Witness and Cold Feet.
How did she find filming the novel’s sex scenes, I wonder?
She worked with an intimacy co-ordinator and a female
director, and credits the show for not making the nudity gratuitous,
as well as for its realistic depiction of the messiness of sex. ‘Connell
is lovely with her,’ she says of the moment Marianne loses her
virginity. ‘He tells her they can stop and that there’s no pressure.
That’s so important for people to see, because that’s how it should
be – a safe space with dialogue.’
As for the pressure of playing such a beloved literary
character, she’s trying not to overthink it. It was only after her
flatmate, who works at Waterstones, reminded her that Normal
People was the retailer’s 2O18 book of the year that she realised
the enormity of taking on the role. ‘You can never satisfy everyone,
but I love the book just as much as the next person. I want to
do it justice,’ she smiles. And on the prospect of achieving
success akin to Emilia Clarke and Emma Watson, whose paths
to international superstardom began with much-loved literary
adaptations, she shrugs: ‘I haven’t really thought about it. You
never really know about these things; it might come and go.’
Fresh from a debut theatre performance at the Almeida in
London and with her first leading TV role just weeks away
from airing on the BBC, it’s safe to say that Edgar- Jones is clearly
cut out for the big time. We’ll raise a Guinness to that.
Normal People is out this month” YOU C AN
NEVER SATISF Y
E VERYONE, BUT
I love the book
AS MUCH AS THE
NE X T PERSON.
I WA N T T O D O
IT JUSTICE ”NORMAL PEOPLE