Trivia / Normal People

• Actor-Shared Background: Paul Mescal went to Trinity College, like his character Connell.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Sarah Greene was a huge fan of the original book, and jumped at the chance to star in the adaptation.
• California Doubling:
  • The scenes in Trieste were filmed in Sant'Oreste and Stimigliano.
  • Despite the fictional town of Carricklea being in Sligo, a house in Wicklow stood in for Marianne's and Dublin for Connell's. The Sligo-set school was also filmed in Clonsilla, Dublin. The Sligo village of Tubbercurry did however stand in for a lot of Carricklea.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Paul Mescal was twenty-four playing Connell while he's still in school. Justified because the series also covers four years, minimising the age gap by the end.
  • Daisy Edgar-Jones was twenty-one, but by the Time Skip is actually younger than Marianne.
• Dark Horse Casting: Besides Sarah Greene, the cast is made up of unknown young actors and up-and-comers. Paul Mescal had never acted on screen before and was best known at the time for appearing in an ad for Denny rashers, while Daisy Edgar-Jones had only just starred in an adaptation of War of the Worlds.
• Deleted Role: Joanna's girlfriend Evelyn from the book had a scene originally, but it was cut.
• Enforced Method Acting: Paul Mescal lied to the casting people that he knew how to drive, and hurriedly started taking lessons to be able to do the role.
• Fake Irish: Daisy Edgar-Jones hails from North London, but her mother has Irish roots. Word of God is that he wanted Marianne to have an "anglicised" accent so she would speak different from her peers.
• Fake Nationality: Downplayed with Paul Mescal, who plays the Sligo native Connell, but is from Maynooth, Kildare - on the opposite side of the country.
• Meme Acknowledgment: A gif was made of Joanna saying "my mum's great" (after Peggy and Marianne talk about their complicated relationships with mothers). Eliot Salt recalls sending it to her own mother once she saw it.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor: Well only if you go by the book and deleted scenes, but Joanna is in a relationship with a woman. Her actress Elliot Salt has a girlfriend in real life.
• Star-Making Role:
  • Paul Mescal was a complete unknown beforehand, and the series was his first television role. His Emmy nominated performance immediately led to him headlining another series The Deceived and an eventual Oscar nomination for Aftersun.
  • A similar trajectory ensued for Daisy Edgar-Jones, with her next roles after the series including the female lead of the horror movie Fresh (2022), a major role in the True Crime miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven, and the lead role in the movie adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing.
• Self-Adaptation: Sally Rooney helped write the television adaptation of her novel.
• Underage Casting: Sarah Greene is only eleven years older than her on-screen son Paul Mescal. It does make sense for her to be a young mother, as Connell was the result of a Teen Pregnancy.
• What Could Have Been: Elliot Salt jokes that she lobbied for Joanna to go to Italy as well, but later affirmed that her being there would prevent some of the drama unfolding.