Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends cast has a big problem
It’s billed as the next Normal People. But with most lead roles going to non-Irish actors, fans are asking what happened during the casting process.
Irish author Sally Rooney has a knack for knowing exactly the kinds of stories people want to read.
Her first two novels are global bestsellers, despite not having a single wizard, spy or superhero within their pages. Both Normal People and Conversations With Friends — which will be adapted into a miniseries set for release in 2022 — are books that tell the stories of young men and women trying to understand themselves, and the world they live in, better, often by way of sex.
Quite a lot of sex, actually, as the ensuing Normal People miniseries adaptation — available to stream on Stan — proved last year. Stars Paul Mescal, as the chain-wearing Connell, and Daisy Edgar-Jones as the befringed Marianne stayed true to the book, working with an intimacy co-ordinator to ensure that the sex scenes between their two characters were emotional, moving and authentic.
Today, the cast for the Conversations With Friends miniseries was announced, in the hope that the four main actors will prove to be the next Mescal and Edgar-Jones.
Starring in the series are three established names and one newcomer. Alison Oliver will play Frances, the 21-year-old poet and student at the heart of the series. Oliver hails from Lir Academy, Ireland’s national drama school — and the alma mater of Normal People’s Mescal. Her titular friend Bobbi will be played by Sasha Lane (American Honey), charming and forthright and unforgettable.
Because Conversations With Friends is a love quadrangle, there are two other actors in the mix. The first is Jemima Kirke (Girls), who is playing Melissa, the 30-something writer who becomes entangled in the circle via a friendship — and maybe more — with both Frances and Bobbi.
And then there’s Nick, Melissa’s husband, and an actor in small Irish television productions, who ends up even further enmeshed in the lives of the young women, Frances in particular. Nick will be played by Joe Alwyn (The Favourite, Mary Queen of Scots), otherwise known as Mr Taylor Swift himself.
“Conversations With Friends is one of my favourite books of the last few years,” Alwyn shared on Instagram. “I’m so grateful and excited to be invited onboard, and to get to work with this amazingly talented group of people.”
Without a doubt, there are things to celebrate about this acting foursome. Bobbi being played by a woman of colour — Lane’s father is African American and her mother is of Maori descent — is fantastic, especially given the criticism of Normal People’s overwhelming white cast.
And the discovery of Oliver straight out of drama school is exciting. The success of Normal People as a series was in part because both Mescal and Edgar-Jones were unknowns, just like Oliver.
But Oliver will also have to bear the burden of being the only Irish actor in the main cast. Alwyn, Lane and Kirke are not Irish, and given the wealth of acting talent in that country — we can all agree that Andrew Scott, Fleabag’s Hot Priest, was right there and ready to be cast as Nick, can’t we? — it is a strange decision to look elsewhere for actors to star in a series that will film in Ireland, is set in Ireland, and was written by an Irish author.
Fans voiced their dismay on Twitter about the lack of Irish names in the cast. Several points were made, including the recent swath of butchered Irish accents by non-Irish actors, the most egregious of which was the recent Wild Mountain Thyme, starring Christopher Walken and Emily Blunt.
really disappointed that only 1/4 of the main characters for conversations with friends is actually irish. the fake irish accents, if any, will spoil the show
— abs (@dryteabag) February 17, 2021
when we get a half hour long wired accent video on butchered irish accents because of conversations with friends >
— elizabeth (@peeanofreek) February 17, 2021
Buzzin for Conversations with Friends but BAFFLED by the lack of Irish actors in the leading roles. . . As if we don’t have a gigantic pool of talent in this country
— Freya Carroll (@FreyaCarroll) February 17, 2021
so , out of the four leads in conversations with friends only one of them is Irish?!?!?
— 🌺josh🌺 (@hsojfoley) February 17, 2021
Who knows! They may all surprise us. Alongside being a secret songwriter — he penned tracks on girlfriend Taylor Swift’s latest album Folklore — perhaps he’s a master of accents, too? We’ll have to wait until 2022, when the series is slated for release, to find out.
Normal People’s success put Rooney’s debut novel Conversations With Friends at the top of every Hollywood producer’s to-be-adapted pile. Director Lenny Abrahamson, who helmed the Normal People adaptation, was tapped to create the series, with a writing team that includes Succession’s Susan Soon He Stanton, Normal People scribe Alice Birch and Irish writer Mark O’Halloran. Production will take place in Dublin this year.
But perhaps the next time a series is greenlit that is set in Ireland, made in Ireland, directed by an Irish filmmaker, based on an Irish book and about the lives of young Irish people, maybe it should have a largely Irish cast, too.
Normal People is available to stream now on Stan. Conversations With Friends will stream on BBC and Hulu in the UK and the US in 2022, with an Australian distributor to be announced.