“I think Sally Rooney had a similar feeling to me,
which was like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’”
says Daisy Edgar-Jones. At a smart café in North London,
the 21-year-old actor is discussing—and, it seems, still
processing—her star billing in the BBC and Hulu adaptation
of Rooney’s best-selling novel Normal People. “When we were
making it, we didn’t even register that people were actually
going to see it,” she says, settling into a sunny window seat.
In the nearly two years since its publication, Normal People
has generated a fandom with the passion of Potterheads,
Trekkies, or Marvelites—only with more New Yorker tote
bags. The novel tells the story of a turbulent love affair
between the rich, smart Marianne (played in the adaptation
by Edgar-Jones) and the equally smart but working-class
TALENT
Connell (played by the 24-year-old Irish actor Paul Mescal),
whose relationship begins at school in small-town Ireland
and intensifies in both its passion and its heart-wrenching
complications at Trinity College in Dublin. Neither actor
had read the book before auditions were set, but a surprising
number of people had told Mescal he was a perfect fit for
the part of Connell, he recalls when we speak over the phone
during a break in rehearsals for a revival of The Lieutenant
of Inishmore at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre.
Mescal grew up in Maynooth, a town just west of Dublin.
Like the onscreen Connell, he spent his school days playing
Gaelic football, and like Connell he moved away from his small
hometown to study at Trinity—he got his drama degree at the
affiliated Lir Academy in 2017. Edgar-Jones, on the other hand,
had never even been to Dublin
when she was called to audition in
March of last year. An only child
raised in London’s Muswell Hill
neighborhood, she grew up on the
periphery of the entertainment
industry, her mother a film editor
from Northern Ireland, her father
a Scottish TV producer
The two stars of the beautiful,
torturous Normal People adaptation
are poised for a life less ordinary.
Bad Romance
HAND IN HAND
DAISY EDGAR-JONES (IN
PRADA) AND PAUL MESCAL
(IN AN ACNE STUDIOS
SWEATER AND ROCHAS
HOMME PANTS) EMBODY
THE LEAD CHARACTERS
OF SALLY ROONEY’S NOVEL.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY
ALESSANDRA SANGUINETTI.
FASHION EDITOR:
ALEXANDRA CRONAN. TA L E N T>7 2
VLIFE
68 APRIL 2020 VOGUE.COM
ALESSANDRA SANGUINETTI OF MAGNUM PHOTOS. PRODUCED BY JN PRODUCTION. HAIR, MARANDA; MAKEUP, SOPHIE HAIG. DETAILS, SEE IN THIS ISSUE.
