Joe Alwyn plays Nick opposite Alison Oliver's Frances in Conversations with Friends. Photo / Supplied
The star of Conversations with Friends on Sally Rooney's advice, intimacy co-ordinators and her big break.
The slightest hint of a blush starts to spread across Alison Oliver's face. The star of the BBC's new adaptation of Sally Rooney's novel Conversations with Friends is making a valiant attempt to be professional, but she can't help giggling as we discuss what it was like to film a whopping great number of sex scenes. Aged 24, Oliver is taking on her first big role. It is the first time she has done anything this revealing and as if all this wasn't daunting enough, she was filming the scenes with Joe Alwyn, who is Taylor Swift's boyfriend. Oh, and Swift was on set.
Oliver acknowledges it was surreal — after all, she played the pop star's songs on the guitar when she was a teenager growing up in Cork. Swift, whose song London Boy is about Alwyn, has been going out with the actor since 2016 as his star has risen with impressive performances in The Favourite and the upcoming film The Stars at Noon. They all spent a month last September filming in Croatia, having dinner parties, playing games and swimming in the sea. Oliver insists the pop star was "totally cool" and understands sex scenes are "part of Joe's job, all part of the story".
Oliver is about to become a lot more widely known. The last Sally Rooney adaptation, Normal People, became the BBC's most streamed series of 2020, with 63 million views, and turned its young leads Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal into Hollywood stars.
Conversations with Friends, Rooney's first novel, takes the age-old story of an affair between a married older man and a young woman and updates it with discussions about bisexuality and whether everyone is necessarily suited to monogamy — it's radical for a primetime show.
Oliver plays Frances, a 21-year-old communist poet who through her former girlfriend Bobbi becomes friends with an older couple in their thirties, Melissa, a photographer, and Nick, an enigmatic actor. He and Frances begins an intense affair. Jemima Kirke (Girls, Sex Education) is a forthright Melissa and Sasha Lane plays Bobbi.
Like Normal People, it captures the way people can hurt those they love, and being, as Oliver says, "on the cusp of adult life after you have left college — which is where I was when I read it".
She went to the Lir Academy drama school in Dublin with Mescal, who was a couple of years above her. "We chatted away when I was cast and I chatted to Daisy too," she says. "We are all part of the Rooneyverse, so there is a camaraderie. They told me to just enjoy it."
When she auditioned for the show, Oliver was living with her parents (her mother is a social worker; her father worked in the motor trade). She says "luckily" they had read Conversations with Friends and seen Normal People, so there were no awkward conversations priming them for the sex scenes.
"I learnt a lot filming those scenes," Oliver says. The intimacy co-ordinators were "like magicians". "They give you intimacy garments, like skin-coloured knickers, and you can ask for pads and stuff to protect you and create distance between the other person. It's approached like a stunt — you are creating an illusion. The director, Lenny Abrahamson, let us be silly. He would say, 'Let's get the giggles out.'"
Oliver is less highly strung than Frances, hugging her knees as we talk, and showing me a tattoo of three lines on her wrist — she's into numerology and three is her favourite number. She has another tattoo of a half moon under her arm, which we see in the show. "I try not to go there too much thinking about being naked on television," she says. "I don't think Frances would worry about her body or go on a diet."
Conversations with Friends also shows Frances's experience of endometriosis, where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows in places it shouldn't, such as the ovaries. As well as being painful it can cause infertility. Frances experiences debilitating pain, including during sex with Nick. It's rare that you see a woman with period pain on television, let alone something like this.
"Frances doesn't want to acknowledge that it is a problem, not going to the doctor until the pain becomes critical," says Oliver, who spoke to women who have endometriosis. "It's like a pressure cooker and the more she ignores it the worse it gets. Endometriosis is so underdiscussed and yet so many women have it, and so many don't realise they have it. I felt a responsibility to get it right — showing its emotional effects as well as the physical ones."
Rooney wasn't involved in the production (she was busy writing her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You) but Oliver sought her out. "She told me that Frances is a brain in a jar, which I don't think is in the book. That was helpful when I was thinking about her physicality. She is so uncomfortable in her own body, insular, observing others. She also shared the playlists she makes for her characters... And I just tried to eat the book."
The only other actor in Oliver's family is her grandmother, who did amateur dramatics but her parents took her to the theatre a lot. "I remember going to London to see Billy Elliot and the cast were of a similar age to me. I wanted to be up there on stage with them." She had a musical phase too, teaching herself guitar, "trying to be Ed Sheeran".
Having older twin sisters informed the way she approached Frances and Bobbi's bond in the show. "I saw how inseparable my sisters were and it made me always want a best friend too. There's something about female friendship I think most women will be able to relate to when they watch Frances and Bobbi — that sense where you are so used to living out of each other's pockets and if there is any shift the other one can sense it straight away."
Oliver is now filming Best Interests, a Jack Thorne drama about a girl with a terminal illness and is speaking to me from the set.
She can't wait for Conversations with Friends to air. "It feels like I haven't seen anything like that on television before — discussing how it is possible to genuinely love two people. The more we can be accepting of other ideas the better. I first auditioned in July 2020, so it has been a part of my life for so long. I'm in such a lovely, buzzy place right now."
Conversations With Friends is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video from May 16.
The Essex Serpent
It is 1893 and a mythical sea creature is believed to be slithering through the Essex marshes, unsettling the tight-knit community. Sarah Perry's 2016 gothic novel is a remarkable work of historical fiction with rich prose and complex characters. Now Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes will star in a six-part adaptation of it. He plays a troubled vicar and she a recently widowed amateur naturalist who has come to the area in hot pursuit of fossils.
The Essex Serpent is available to stream on Apple TV+ from May 13.
The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 science-fiction romance novel has been adapted before, and it's a brave step to take on the much-loved 2009 film, which starred Rachel McAdams as the long-suffering partner of a reluctant time traveller. Yet with the Sherlock showrunner Steven Moffat writing the show and Rose Leslie from Games of Thrones in the lead, this will be a series to watch out for.
The Time Traveler's Wife is available to stream on Neon from May 16.
Written by: Susannah Butter
© The Times of London
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