It’s Sally Rooney’s world and we’re just living in it. On Tuesday, Hulu and BBC Three unveiled the teaser for Conversations With Friends, the second TV adaption of one of the Irish wunderkind’s novels, following 2020’s Normal People.
The trailer manages to pack plenty of sex, secrets, and lies into just 55 seconds. The 12-part series is about the close but tumultuous friendship between college students and exes Frances (Alison Oliver) and Bobbi (Sasha Lane of American Honey). Frances is meek and unassuming, while Bobbi is magnetic and outgoing, and their dynamic is upended when they meet an attractive married couple at a poetry reading and begin hanging out as a group. Melissa (Girls’ Jemima Kirke) is a writer, and her husband Nick is a hunky actor played by Mr. Taylor Swift himself, Joe Alwyn.
What follows is a messy entanglement of passion and jealousy as Bobbi and Melissa, both the fiery ones in their respective relationships, flirt with one another at every opportunity. Meanwhile, their quieter counterparts, Frances and Nick, begin a full-blown sexual and romantic affair.
“People can be in love and have meaningful relationships with other people,” Lane’s Bobbi says in the clip. Oliver’s more sensitive and conventional Frances asks in response, “Wouldn’t it depress you to sleep with someone who loves someone else?”
The tagline of the trailer ominously reads, “It’s never just friends.” Surely this love rectangle (square? parallelogram?) must end in heartbreak.
Conversations With Friends comes two years after Hulu’s adaptation of Normal People, Rooney’s wildly popular 2018 novel. Starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, Normal People was met with critical acclaim and even landed a few Emmy nods. Many of the creatives behind Normal People are reuniting for this project, including director Lenny Abrahamson (Room). It’s slated for release on Hulu, BBC Three, and Ireland’s RTÉ in May.
