Normal People star Paul Mescal has revealed he couldn't sleep before filming the show’s sex scenes.
The 24-year-old and his co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones had an intimacy coach, Ita O'Brien, to help them with the potentially difficult scenes in the BBC's adaptation of Sally Rooney’s hit novel.
Despite this, the Irish actor told Mr Porter Magazine’s The Journal that he and Edgar-Jones, 21, were both “incredibly” nervous.
He said: “We would discuss the scene and then Ita would block what we had discussed so it wasn’t mine or Daisy’s responsibility to decide what was appropriate…
"You’re told what to do. It’s freeing! On the first Friday of the first week, we had a full day of sex scenes. It’s fair to say we were both incredibly nervous. That Thursday, I didn’t sleep.”
The actor, who until recently was best known for his theatre work in Ireland, felt nervous about people seeing him naked on television.
He said: “The closer I’m getting to people seeing me fully nude on screen – it does make me slightly nervous.”
The show and novel are about the relationship between two young people - Connell, played by Mescal, and Marianne (Edgar-Jones).
One of the most powerful scenes in the show, which was created with streaming service Hulu, is when Connell asks Marianne for consent before they sleep together.
On the moment, Mescal said: “I think that moment is incredibly sexy. It could have appeared really sanitised, like: look at this character doing the right thing. But, of course he is doing the right thing.”
He also spoke about the on-screen chemistry he and Edgar-Jones share and how he hoped to one day find love like their characters.
“You see loads of TV shows and films that have been really quite good but you don’t buy the chemistry at the centre of the relationship…" he said. "Even if we had rehearsed for five or six months, it’s not something that we could have cultivated. It’s an innate thing, you can’t read a book and suddenly have chemistry between two people.”
He added: “I want to find something similar to Connell and Marianne, but only in the last chapter in the book when they have such a deep connection emotionally and physically. That might be a dragon that I might be chasing for a long time. No better pair to learn from than Connell and Marianne.”
Mescal has recently moved to London from his native Maynooth, Ireland and has been spending his lockdown building flatpack furniture.
“I got a trip to Ikea in just before the lockdown which I am grateful for," he continued. "I still have little things left to build – things to get frustrated with.”
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