The TV adaption of the 2017 Sally Rooney novel is coming out on May 15th and Joe Alwyn is about to be catapulted into the spotlight.
'Conversations with Friends' by Irish writer Sally Rooney was originally published back in May 2017 and a brisk five years later, we're getting the TV adaption of the book.
Joe Alwyn will play the role of the outwardly sulky, inwardly lovely (kind of) Nick Conway who (spoiler) has on affair with a young girl, whose wife has a sort of affair with the young girl's friend (and ex), also a young girl.
Yeah, we know how it sounds, but if 'Normal People' is anything to go by, we're in for a somewhat heart-wrenching treat and a brand new Rooney character to fall in love with after Paul Mescal.
GQ even cites that when Alwyn was cast, a Whatsapp group was founded by a friend of both Mescal and Alwyn, called 'The Tortured Man Club', a nod to their Rooney characters.
When is comes to that kind of meme-able level of public adoration a la Paul Mescal, Alwyn has some experience, what with being Taylor Swift's boyfriend for the past five years and all.
But the two are about as low-key as it gets for a couple who win Grammys for songs they've written together over lock-down — Joe even made up an alias 'William Bowery' for the tracks 'Exile', 'Chamoagne Problems', 'Coney Island', and 'Betty'.
In an age wherein we share everything bar the kitchen sink, The Guardian talk to the actor about "privacy", especially regarding his relationship with the megastar.
"If you don’t post about the way you make your coffee in the morning, or if you don’t let someone take a picture when you walk out of your front door, is that being private? I don’t know if it is."
So, how is he going to handle being propelled further into the public eye than he's ever been? He hasn't accounted for that yet, “I haven’t let myself think, ‘Oh God, people are actually going to see it’, so I haven’t thought about that side of things".
Of his character Nick's South Dublin accent, he tells GQ, "I listened to people like Andrew Scott and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and that kind of middle-class south Dublin accent. [Nick’s] is quite anglicized, there was the idea that he would have been to drama school in London, and he has a British wife and so maybe some of those sounds have been softened as well"
We're looking forward to watching Joe's character 'Nick' come to life onscreen after only having used our imagination to put him together from reading the book. And of course, we can't wait to hear his Irish accent.
'Conversation's with Friends' airs on RTÉ, Hulu, BBC Three, and BBC iPlayer on the 15th of May.