Conversations With Friends’ Alison Oliver on ‘Normal People’ Comparisons: ‘I Think There’s Pressure Doing Anything’
15.05.2022 - 17:09
/ usmagazine.com
Frances and Connell were classmates! Conversations With Friends‘ Alison Oliver walked the halls alongside none other than Normal People’s Paul Mescal when the actors both attended The Lir Academy in Dublin, Ireland.
Everything to Know About ‘Conversations With Friends’
“Paul was three years above me, I think, in college, and I always knew him and he was always amazing, and it wasn’t until I was kind of, I think, maybe in second or third year I got to know him a little bit better. And then when I was kind of auditioning for this or got the role, he was just so lovely,” Oliver, 23, exclusively told Us Weekly. “It’s funny going through quite a similar thing to someone who’s had a similar kind of start as well. I think Lenny [Abrahamson], who directed the show, they’re all primarily Dublin-based and that’s where our college is.”
With just years apart, Oliver and Mescal, 26, would both star in Hulu dramas based on Sally Rooney’s bestselling novels of the same name. While Mescal starred alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones in 2020’s Normal People, Oliver’s Conversations With Friends debuts on Sunday, May 15.
“We actually do a course in that college of Sally Rooney. No, I’m joking! They should probably set one up!” she teased to Us, noting that five others from The Lir appear in her show while about a dozen worked alongside Mescal in his. “It’s really great to see all of the students and stuff get involved in this work.”
Normal People catapulted the careers of Mescal and Edgar-Jones, 23, with the Foe actor earning a British Academy Television Award for his performance. Edgar-Jones, meanwhile, has landed roles in Fresh opposite Sebastian Stan, Andrew Garfield’s Under the Banner of Heaven and the highly anticipated film Where the Crawdads Sing