Sally Rooney Says She Is Not Accepting Offers To Option Her Third Novel & Reflects On ‘Normal People’ TV Series: “I Felt That World Was Not Where I Belonged”
Sally Rooney has been reflecting on her involvement with the TV adaptations of her smash hit novels, concluding “that world was not where I belonged.”
The Normal People author revealed to the New York Times that she has decided not to accept any offers so far to adapt her third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, into a TV show. “I felt like it was just time to take a break from that and let the book be its own thing for a while,” she said.
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Rooney co-wrote the TV version of her second book, Normal People, for the BBC, Hulu and Element Pictures, which was a huge hit with audiences and critics, launching the careers of Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones. For the subsequent TV adaptation of her first novel, Conversations with Friends, which was far less well received, she was an EP but was not part of the writers’ room.
Speaking to the NYT upon the publication of her fourth novel, Intermezzo, Rooney, who has been dubbed the “first great millennial novelist,” a phrase she dismisses, said she “felt [the TV] world was not where I belonged” after the Normal People adaptation.
“The experience of working on [Normal People] had been, in so many ways, amazing — the team of people involved in it,” she said. “But it did also feel like a really big job. Then, when the show was broadcast, that felt like a lot in terms of the amount of discourse that it generated and the amount of media attention. I felt like, OK, now I know that my books are where I belong, and that’s all that I want to be doing.”
In deciding not to accept offers to adapt Beautiful World, Where Are You, she said she wants to “take a break from [TV].”
Rooney’s three books have catapulted her to stardom and she has sold millions of copies around the world. Intermezzo, which comes out this week, follows two grieving brothers struggling to manage their relationships.
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