Inside Paul Mescal And Daisy Edgar-Jones’s Friendship

Normal People Mania has swept lockdowners for the last month – and shows no signs of slowing down. As Marianne and Connell, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal’s on-screen chemistry captivated tens of millions of viewers, making it BBC Three’s most-streamed show ever – as well as its raunchiest, with 41 minutes of sex scenes.

Having long since binged all 12 episodes of the Sally Rooney adaptation, fans have been clamouring for more and more from Paul and Daisy themselves – whether it’s poring over the latest pap shots of Paul in those shorts or following an Instagram account dedicated to ‘Connell’s Chain’.

While Paul has admitted that his mesmerising on-screen chemistry with Daisy was ‘not something we could have cultivated’, off-screen, of course, they are very much just good friends. Daisy, 22, has been dating Game Of Thrones star Tom Varey since last year, and they live together in north London (with three flatmates), while Paul, 24, has been self-isolating alone in Hackney, where he moved to from Ireland shortly before lockdown started.

As they’ve watched their social media following grow (between them the actors have accrued over a million new followers on Instagram since the series dropped in April) and their status as bona fide celebrities solidifies, however, they’ve been turning to one another and their friendship to keep themselves grounded amid the madness.

Daisy admitted recently that she had been struggling with this huge, sudden tidal wave of fame during lockdown, saying, ‘It has been strange experiencing it all from my bedroom.’ When Grazia caught up with Paul via Zoom, he said it had been a ‘crazy time’ for both of them, and that he spent ‘a lot’ of time on the phone with Daisy (who he calls ‘Dais’, while she calls him ‘Paulio’). He added that their strong bond – as well as that between the cast as a whole – was ‘testament to the level of love and care that went into making the show’.

The pair regularly post tributes to one another on Instagram. On Daisy’s 22nd birthday on 24 May, Paul posted a series of photographs of his friend with the caption, ‘Happy birthday to this LEGEND! @daisyedgarjones you are one of a kind. Have the best day ever’ to which some of the more hopeful Normal People stans replied that he should ‘marry her’.

That won’t be happening any time soon, either on-screen (there will be no second series of Normal People, unless the BBC can persuade Sally Rooney to get on-board to write a sequel) or in real life.

An insider tells Grazia that Paul and Daisy have forged a deep friendship but it has never verged on romantic territory. ‘They have become genuine best friends, and it’s been so important that they’ve had each other to navigate this time with, it’s been overwhelming for both of them.’

For Paul, for whom Normal People was his first ever TV role, and Daisy, who had previously had a small role in ITV’s Cold Feet, suddenly finding themselves the most in-demand acting talent has meant a huge Zoom interview tour to discuss the Normal People phenomenon, which saw them appear on The Late Late Show With James Corden in the US and The Graham Norton Show here. Paul told Grazia that directors Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald had told him that the response to the show has been ‘unprecedented’.

Now Paul and Daisy are weighing up their many options for what will come next once lockdown lifts and regulations around filming and workplaces become clearer. Paul told Grazia that there were a couple of things in the pipeline that he couldn’t yet talk about – nor, of course, can either of them fly to LA for meetings just yet.

So for now, fans will have to content themselves with watching Paul and Daisy’s friendship play out online – or waiting for a new post on Connell’s Chain...

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