became an instant critical hit and bestseller. The now 29-year old Irish author’s second novel is an exploration of a young relationship, involving love and heartache, following the friendship between high school loner Marianne and the handsome and popular Connell, who first connect as they meet outside school at her home. The two create a special bond, which becomes significant in their personal development. The story of Marianne and Connell has now been adapted into a 12-part Hulu series with newcomers Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal as Marianne and Connell. We spoke to Sally Rooney, who also played a big part in the television adaptation process.

How did your novel “Normal People” end up becoming a TV series?

BBC and Element Pictures, an Irish production company, had optioned the rights to my first novel, “Conversations with Friends,” and shortly before “Normal People” was published, they got an advance copy of it, read it, and contacted Lenny Abrahamson, the director, and they said they really wanted to adapt it for television. I have been a huge admirer of Lenny and his work for ages, so I thought it was a huge privilege. Any adaptation sounds exciting, but this seemed very special to me. This happened very early on, before the book had actually been published, and before I knew if anyone would like it or not. So it started in the really early stages of the novel.

You were part of the process of writing the TV series. Alice Birch and Mark O’Rowe are credited too. Did you have more people in the writers’ room, and what was this process like compared to writing a novel in solitude?

Most of the time, I worked in solitude like I did with my novels, but then I would share the drafts with Lenny and with Alice. Alice was massively important in the process and very much my co-writer. She was in London and I was in Dublin, so we were emailing each other – we were in contact, but we were both working on our respective little bubbles. Lenny and Alice would come back to me with notes on what I’d written, and then I would draft it again, so mostly it was pretty similar in that I was alone with my laptop. But then, of course, I did get feedback, so it was collaborative, too.

When did you meet Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal, who play Marianne and Connell? And what was it like seeing the characters that you created in your mind come to life?

That was definitely one of the memorable aspects of this entire experience. I was involved in casting from the very beginning, so I had seen early tapes of the different auditions, and we knew very early on that Paul was Connell. I remember seeing a tape of him where he was reading for the part – it was a scene with quite a lot of dialogue in it, so he was going straight into some of the more emotionally intense aspects of the role. I immediately knew that he was the personification of this fictitious character that I had created, so that was completely spooky. Later on in the process, I had a similar experience with Daisy knowing that here was someone who could really embody this character that to that point had just been a figment of my imagination. So that was kind of bizarre and difficult to come to grips with. I felt very nervous watching takes because it felt like making my story real, which I was not sure I was prepared for. We were so blessed to find these two actors. I believe they really were perfect for the parts – and equally important – they were perfect together on screen. 

How much were you involved in the shooting of the show? Were you present on set a lot?

I did visit the set a couple of times and I always felt I was part of the process of what was going on. But the world of filming was completely unfamiliar to me, and it was not ever a world that I had had the ambition of becoming involved in. I never foresaw when I was writing “Normal People” that it would be anything other than a novel, and in terms of it getting published and sharing it with the world, I felt very lucky that it even was that. When it came to the adaptation, I really had no expectations and no idea about what that would involve or what I wanted my own involvement to be. I think it was just the team at the BBC – and of course Lenny – who really made me feel that this was something I could get excited about, and it was the specifics of what they talked about wanting to do with the story that made me feel that this was something that I wanted to be part of. I had never been on a set before, so it was very unfamiliar and in a sense a very technical world in a way that is very different from the world of writing a novel. 

Normal People is your baby – what is it like to pass it on to other creative people and share it with them?

That has definitely been very strange, and in the beginning of the process, I thought it was going to be really challenging. As a novelist, you have such a high level of control over your own output. There is not a comma that you did not put there, and it is all your own work. I knew from the beginning that this was to be a collaboration – there is no single author of a TV-show. Of course, there is Lenny who is the creative director of the series, and Mark and Alice, the writers, but you also have the actors and what their performance brings, and the lighting technicians, directors of photography… and so in a way everybody is the creator of this television series. It is not just Lenny and certainly not just me. So I had a moment of “Aha! This is a bit different!” and then I had to negotiate my own relationship with it because I love the television show, but I’d feel embarrassed to take credit for it in any way, because I know I didn’t write it in the way that I wrote my novel. So, it is a different kind of creative product and it is kind of tricky trying to find out exactly what my relationship to it is because I don’t really feel I can be proud of it personally because it is not just all me. 

You are still young – 29 years old. What are your dreams for the future – personally and professionally?

I am definitely first and foremost a novelist and I will be for the foreseeable future. We are making an adaptation of “Conversations with Friends” and the same team, with Lenny and BBC, and I’m very excited about that because this has been such an exciting, exhilarating experience for me to see what other people can do with the seed of an idea that I generated, and to watch them go and make something from it that is so beautiful. So I am very excited about that, but in terms of my own creative ambition, I am still a novelist.