Taken from our Winter 21 issue, order your copy here…

When Daisy Edgar-Jones pops onto my computer screen for our Zoom chat, I have to stop myself from addressing her as “Marianne”, so often do my friends and I slip into Irish accents to quote Edgar-Jones and co-star Paul Mescal’s beloved characters in the BAFTA Award-winning, Golden Globe-nominated Normal People. The BBC series, which streamed on Hulu in the States, was a global hit during early COVID lockdowns in 2020 and saw Edgar-Jones catapulted to mainstream fame… all while stuck at home like the rest of us.

“I’m still trying to unpick what that year felt like as it was such an unbelievable situation that we were in,” says the 23-year-old, from her bedroom in London. “It was quite out of body. When you’re experiencing that level of a show’s popularity, but you’re only able to leave your house for a 20-minute walk every day, it’s a very hard thing to connect to. When we filmed the show it was a very shared experience between us and the filmmakers, and Paul and I, but for the entirety of its release we didn’t see each other. It was a very lonely experience in many ways because we weren’t able to share the joys of certain things, but it was obviously amazing. I feel like in some ways the pandemic helped our show to reach even further than it may have, but it was also surreal and at times a wee bit lonely.”

Normal People certainly had reach, with the adaptation of Sally Rooney’s bestselling novel gripping viewers around the world, thanks to the intoxicatingly realistic and complex portrayal of first love that played out on screen between Edgar-Jones’ Marianne and Mescal’s Connell. In the wake of the show’s success, it should come as no surprise that Edgar-Jones has had quite the 2021, filming her first major film roles and two book-to-screen adaptations that are bound to have fans obsessed all over again.

Taking the lead in Where the Crawdads Sing – the movie of Delia Owens’ New York Times Bestseller – Edgar-Jones plays Kya, a woman who was abandoned by her parents at a young age in the coastal marshlands of North Carolina. “It was such an incredible experience, first of all, to be in New Orleans where we filmed most of the marsh scenes,” says Edgar-Jones, who was born and raised in London. “I’d never really been in, or seen, that kind of terrain before so it was just such a beautiful place to spend some time. A lot of the work was done for us by the nature; it’s such a character in the film. Kya is an incredibly resilient person, she essentially brings herself up, because a lot of her family leave her and it’s really a story about survival, resilience and loneliness. She is such a brilliant literary character and it was great to spend a long time working out how to bring her to life.”

Where the Crawdads Sing found itself as Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club pick in September 2018 and, subsequently, she produced the film via her Hello Sunshine production company. Back in June, Reese shared photos of herself visiting the set, including a snap with Edgar-Jones and her co-stars. “I’ve been a big fan of Reese since I was very wee,” says the actor. “It was wonderful to meet her and she’s such an intelligent collaborator; it was great when she came to visit.”

Much like Reese, Edgar-Jones is a voracious reader, so the process of taking a character off the page and making it her own is an enjoyable one. “I’ve always been a really avid reader from a young age and my mum, similarly, she’s probably read every book that’s ever been written,” says Edgar-Jones. “There’s something so special about falling in love with the world of a book, and the character within it, and then having the chance to bring that person to life. I feel so lucky that in my career so far I’ve been able to do that with Marianne and now with Kya. It’s such a great thing to have this resource when you’re making something, and such brilliant references to hand when you’re sort of developing the character for yourself, but there is also added pressure because you’re bringing a character to life that other people have already realised in their imagination.”

Edgar-Jones also experienced playing the lead in a film that wasn’t based on a book this year, when she filmed Fresh, a so-far secretive social thriller that was shot in Vancouver back in February. “I’m excited to see what the audience’s reaction will be when they don’t know what it’s about,” she says. “The plot has been kept under wraps and I think that’s part of the joy of it.”

Fresh, from director Mimi Cave and writer Lauryn Kahn, marked quite a few new experiences for Edgar-Jones. “It was my first time working properly away from home; the furthest I’d ever gone for work before was Ireland, which is only an hour on the plane,” she says. “Normal People is very much a two-hander and Fresh is to an extent between Sebastian Stan and I, but it’s definitely more of a leading role, which I really enjoyed. It was my first time doing an American accent, too, which was really fun.”

I ask how it was working with Mr Winter Soldier himself, Sebastian Stan, who Edgar-Jones was photographed kissing during the filming of a scene for Fresh. “Sebastian, I mean, he’s amazing,” she says. “He’s brilliant. I always think, when it comes to acting, you can only be as good as the person in the scene with you. It’s such a privilege to work with wonderful actors like Paul, obviously, and Sebastian similarly. He gives you so much and he’s so present, and he encourages you to play, and to be free. We did a lot of improv, which I had never really done before, and that’s a bit of a challenge when it’s not your natural accent. It was actually so much fun. I think we have a very similar sense of humour, so we were able to make each other laugh in the scenes and that’s such a joy when you’re improvising. So, yeah, he’s great.”

Despite Fresh presenting Edgar-Jones’ first need for an American accent, it wasn’t her last of the year; she took on a North Carolinian twang for Crawdads and plays murdered Utah woman Brenda Lafferty in Under the Banner of Heaven, the FX on Hulu series she is currently filming. “I love working in accents,” says Edgar-Jones. “I prefer it. I hate doing stuff in my own accent, ’cause I always feel self-conscious. I found it funny with American, because when I was doing an Irish accent and different regional accents in the UK, we have such an ear for the fact that there are so many different accents in such a short mile radius. You can go 20 minutes down the road in the UK and have a completely different dialect; there’s a real specificity to it. In America, there is such a thing as a general accent and then, of course, there are very specific accents too. I think I found it difficult, trying to find a way of adding specificity to a general accent, if you know what I mean. I found North Carolina the easiest, because you could really hear it and you know it’s an accent, whereas with the general middle America there’s not as much to hang your hat on.”

With Under the Banner of Heaven, Edgar-Jones had a lot of studying to do beyond just the accent, given the sensitive nature of the show’s subject matter. Based on Jon Krakauer’s 2003 book of the same name, which itself is an in-depth look at the 1984 killing of Brenda Lafferty and her baby daughter, Erica, the series sees a devout Latter-day Saint detective have his faith tested when he investigates Brenda’s brutal murder by her two fundamentalist LDS brothers-in-law.

“Jon Krakauer’s book is such a fascinating read,” says Edgar-Jones, when I ask what attracted her to the project. “He also wrote a great book called Into Thin Air, so I’ve always loved his writing. I didn’t grow up in a very religious family, so I was interested in religion generally and with Mormonism I’d always been sort of interested in it because I didn’t know much about it. I think what struck me was, and what [Jon] kind of touches on in the book, is the violence within religion sometimes and particularly towards women. I was really interested in unpicking that. It’s based on a real woman who was murdered in the eighties for trying to help her friends escape some fundamentalist elements of the religion and I thought she was a wonderful character, and a really strong person. I was curious to represent her.”

Of course, Edgar-Jones wanted to be careful to be respectful to Brenda and her loved ones, while still doing justice to her strength of character. “When you’re taking on a real person, especially considering what happened to her and that there are still victims of the crime very much alive today – her family – you have to be really sensitive representing someone truthfully and kindly. I felt that was very important while making sure to capture the nuances of everything because nothing’s ever black and white. I did a lot of research and made sure that I really delved into learning about Mormonism, the religion and also that part of Utah where they grew up, in Salt Lake City. I think it’s important when you’re taking on these kinds of roles, to do the research and be informed.”

Edgar-Jones still has to complete filming on the series, which was created and adapted from the book by Dustin Lance Black, but when we catch up she’s enjoying two weeks at home in London and plans to return again for the Christmas holidays. Though she’s spent much of this year in the US and Canada for work, it seems the UK still has her heart. “When I was away, I was getting very homesick, so I watched the entire two seasons of Ted Lasso and I actually shed a tear when he ate a Hula Hoop,” laughs Edgar-Jones. “I think I was sleep-deprived, but I missed Hula Hoops so much and they had a little bit of banter about tea, and I just missed home. I love the new season of Stath Lets Flats as well; I think I’ve been watching everything that reminds me of home.”

“I realised, whenever I go away for work and come home to London, that I just know I could never really live anywhere else – especially because I love theatre. Obviously New York would be where you’d go if you wanted to do theatre, but I don’t know, there’s something about all theatre here and all our pubs, and the love of a Sunday roast that just makes me feel like I can never not be in London.”

Her love of theatre saw Edgar-Jones take to the stage in Mike Bartlett’s Albion at London’s Almeida Theatre in February 2020, shortly before both COVID and Normal People mania swept the UK, with the BBC later airing the play as part of their Culture in Quarantine series. “I did the play and then we actually had to go to Ireland to do some pick-ups for Normal People,” she says. “It was really interesting to mark the development of my acting from having just done a month of theatre because I was able to play Marianne again, but a year on and I felt far more rooted. I think if you haven’t trained, it’s harder to get into theatre. I did the National Youth Theatre, so I had some form of training from a young age, but it’s just harder to get your foot in the door. Now that I’ve done Albion and had that experience, I feel more confident that I would love to do more theatre. It’s a very broad sweeping statement, but I think a lot of really powerful female characters tend to be on stage and I would like to dip my toe into playing some of those great women.”