Normal People star Paul Mescal has revealed that he had to warn his granny about the awkward sex scenes in the show to avoid any embarrassing moments.
Speaking on tonight’s Graham Norton Show, Mescal said the elderly members of his family have been helping each other to avoid certain scenes.
Mescal said: “My granny warned my great aunt that there were a lot of sexy bits and that when she felt those were about to happen she should go off and do something else,’ he laughed.
“In episode two when we started kissing she took the dog out. But she underestimated the time it would take, and as she came back in we were right in the throes of it all…I suggested that a good long chore or a couple of cups of tea would do the trick next time!”
Based on Sally Rooney’s bestselling novel, Normal People stars Daisy Edgar-Jones (Cold Feet) and newcomer Mescal as Marianne and Connell, following their complicated relationship from their school days to time together at Trinity College.
On the show, Mescal said he did not anticipate the show’s number of viewers, which currently lies at over 30 million.
“That’s not even a number I can compute’, Mescal adds. “It sounds really good and brilliant but it’s not something either of us anticipated. It’s just been good news after good news. It’s crazy!”
In a five star review of the series, NME said: “Running over six hours across 12 episodes, Normal People is a single relationship written large in tiny details – and both actors do a great job of keeping the focus narrowed down to the smallest flickers of love, pain and regret.
What’s more, it’s the chemistry between Mescal and Edgar-Jones that mostly manages to keep the show from sinking too deep into melancholia. For all its raw emotion and underlying sadness, this is a heartfelt love story that radiates warmth from the very start. Expectations might be high, but no one needs to worry. If this really is the only BBC drama we get this year, at least it’s a good one.”
