Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ is returning with special episodes

Is there a single person who has yet to binge-watch the BBC’s Normal People adaptation during lockdown? Fans of Sally Rooney’s critically-acclaimed novel of the same title have not only reread her work during these weeks of self-isolation, they’ve also become obsessed with Connell’s chain (184k Instagram followers and counting…), and channelled Marianne’s summer style. Is it any wonder, then, that the news of two new episodes has caused a lot of chatter?

Set to return to the small screen on June 26, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal–who play Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron—will take part in two special episodes for Comic Relief in Ireland. “There’s a beautiful piece called Normal Older People, which is imagining what would have happened to Marianne and Connell 40 years from now,” Comic Relief co-founder, Richard Curtis, told RTÉ Radio 1. “I promise you, these are two very special bits.”

The ending of Normal People left us guessing what would become of the millennial lovers. As British Vogue revealed last month, Rooney has already written about what happened after Connell leaves Marianne behind in Dublin to attend a graduate writer’s programme in New York. In fact, Normal People is based on At the Clinic, a story she published in the literary magazine The White Review in 2016, which follows the pair on a trip to get Marianne’s wisdom tooth removed when both are 23-years-old.

“It’s so much better than anything we’ve ever made,” Curtis revealed. “I mean I can’t even say [everything] about it because there’s a guest star in it. But it’s really, really beautiful. One of the things about Comic Relief is it just gives opportunities for things to happen that would never happen. I can’t imagine any context in which they would have allowed this little sort of extra special guest into the world of Normal People.”

RTÉ Does Comic Relief airs this Friday (June) on RTÉ One from 8pm.

This story previously appeared on Vogue.co.uk

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