While Normal People has reached the end of that particular Sally Rooney story, the BBC is making moves. Back in February, they announced they'd be adapting Rooney's debut novel Conversations With Friends into a TV series, but speaking to The Hollywood Reporter last week, Normal People co-producer Ed Guiney gave an update on where things are at amidst the lockdown, and squashed any rumours that Normal People would be getting a season 2.
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"We're not thinking about a second season at the moment," he told the outlet. "Maybe in the future at some point in time. What we are doing is the same team are adapting Conversations With Friends, which is Sally's first book. Obviously [it] is a cousin of Normal People in a way, but it's also quite different. We're actively developing that and Lenny [Abrahamson]'s going to direct the opening episodes of that again, and that's very exciting and a lovely thing to be working on during the lockdown."
Given Conversations With Friends the same creative team as Normal People means the original series will, in a way, continue on. Granted, Conversations With Friends is entirely different. It follows two college student, Frances and Bobbi, whose on-again, off-again relationship is thrown out of balance by their friendship with an older couple. Frances embarks on an emotional and later physical affair (which likely means yes, more intense sex scenes) while juggling both her attempted writing career and a puzzling medical ailment.
“I am so pleased to be working with the team at Element, Lenny Abrahamson and the BBC to produce an adaptation of Conversations With Friends," Rooney previously said about the adaptation. "I'm confident we're going to find fresh and interesting ways of dramatising the novel's dynamics, and I'm excited to watch the process take shape."
The big questions about Conversations With Friends, like when it's coming out and who will star, don't yet have answers. However, knowing Rooney, Guiney, Abrahamson, and Normal People series writer Alice Birch used their lockdown to put their heads together and craft another heart-wrenching, emotional visual story will make it well worth the wait.