A First Look at the BBC Adaptation of Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends
Get ready for a new series to obsess over.
Following on from the success of BBC’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People in 2020; the upcoming release of Conversations with Friends is a spectacle on everybody’s radar. On the February 3rd 2022 Vanity Fair released the first images from the upcoming series depicting Jemima Kirke as Melissa; Alison Oliver as Frances; Sasha Lane as Bobbi; and Joe Alwyn as Nick. The decision to cast Sasha Lane as Bobbi highlights a divergence from the novel as Bobbi’s character is represented as a Black American in the series; an important decision to represent Ireland’s diversity within the casting.
Conversations with Friends follows Frances, and English student in Dublin and her ex-girlfriend turned best-friend Bobbi as they meet Melissa and her husband Nick. The two pairings intermingle, and the plot follows the navigation of their respective relationships through the eyes of the protagonist Frances. Many of the same people worked on Conversations with Friends as on Normal People, such as Lenny Abrahamson’s return as director and Alice Birch as writer, creating additional buzz around the show through a sense of guaranteed quality. The aesthetic promoted in the stills serve to increase fans confidence in the series as there are clear visual similarities between the two fostering a lot of enthusiasm online as the aesthetic of Normal People was a huge factor in making it a fan-favourite.
The stills caused waves of excitement online as fans of Rooney’s novels the BBC adaptation of Normal People, featuring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal, alike get a first look into the highly awaited adaptation. Additional excitement stemmed from the overlap between fans of Sally Rooney and Taylor Swift as Swifties were enthused by the crossover of their fandoms by seeing Taylor Swift’s co-writer and boyfriend Joe Alwyn appear in the series.
The series is set to be released in the spring of 2022 on BBC Three in the UK and Hulu in the US.
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