Inside Normal People star Daisy Edgar-Jones’ rise from unknown actress to Hollywood thanks to BBC’s raunchiest show
ONE minute she was sharing a London flat, worried about where her next pay cheque would come from – the next she was starring in one of the BBC’s raunchiest dramas for years.
Daisy Edgar-Jones, 24, turned our front rooms blue in 2020 Irish drama Normal People playing shy girl Marianne, whose sexual awakening saw her plunge into a romp-a-minute romance with hunky Connell, played by Paul Mescal.
Two years on, and her life has changed for ever.
This week sees the premiere of Hollywood movie Where The Crawdads Sing, with Daisy in the lead role.
The mystery thriller, based on the bestselling 2018 novel by US author Delia Owens and released here on July 22, sees Daisy play an American girl who grows up in isolated North Carolina marshlands and becomes a suspect in the murder of a man who once pursued her.
But it has been far from her only big project since Normal People — which was watched in lockdown by 62.7million people, making it the most streamed BBC series of 2020.
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She is now starring with Marvel’s Sebastian Stan in Disney+ comedy- horror movie Fresh, about the dark side of modern dating, which came out in March and is even more X-rated than Normal People
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You can see her, too, alongside Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield in Hulu drama Under The Banner Of Heaven, about a real-life murder inquiry in America’s fundamentalist Mormon community.
Every TV and film producer is now queuing up for her services, asking: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.
But her dizzying rise has come at a price — as she has been here, there and everywhere filming and missed just hanging out with pals at home in Islington, North London.
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She said of the last 12 months: “As much as I’ve loved and am grateful for a year of consistent work, there were times when I was lonely — I really missed my friends.
“I just haven’t seen them. I was away for something like ten and a half months out of the 12.
“And that little bit of time I was home, I was jet-lagged. Bad company.”
She told James Corden on his Late Late Show recently: “There was a point when I was filming in Calgary and I was watching Ted Lasso and he started eating Hula Hoops.
“I started crying. It just made me really miss home.”
Daisy spent her free time watching the Channel 4 fly-on-the wall docu-series Below Deck, about a super-yacht crew, and ordering fast food.
But it made her wonder if, as a twentysomething, she should be out partying rather than working all the time and just staying in at night.
She said: “I bought a candle and I felt . . . joy? But is this enough?
“Should I be living it up more? Is this how our twenties are supposed to be?”
It has not been all work, though. Far from it. Between the nights in with takeaways, her life has been pretty damned glamorous.
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In May, she wore a 1920s-style silver dress to the star-studded Met Ball in New York, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Kim Kardashian.
Last month she dazzled in a black strapless dress at the opening of the Tiffany & Co brand exhibition Vision & Virtuosity at London’s swanky Saatchi Gallery.
Then it was off to Glastonbury with her Normal People co-star Paul Mescal and fellow cast members India Mullen and Fionn O’Shea.
Daisy packed a few fancy frocks but ended up dressing casually to take a break and wind down.
She told the latest edition of Elle magazine: “In my head I was going to be some fashionista.
“Of course, I ended up wearing a jumper and jeans most of the weekend. I chose just to have fun.”
Daisy tells how she and her friends stayed up until the sun rose over the sea of Glasto tents.
She said: “It was magical. We climbed a hill just as the sun was rising.
“It had started to rain lightly and I was like, ‘This is a memory I’ll cherish for ever’.
“Then I looked to my right and a woman was vomiting.”
Oh, she even fitted in a trip to the Wimbledon tennis — sitting in the Royal Box, no less, to see British ace Heather Watson crash out in the round of 16 to German star Jule Niemeier.
Daisy split from her boyfriend of two years, actor Tom Varey, 29, early last year, and her long stints away filming meant lonely nights without a shoulder to cry on.
But now she is back in London and has just bought her own flat, after previously living with her parents — Big Brother telly executive Philip and mum Wendy.
Her latest projects have all received glowing reviews — and she is living the dream she had since age seven.
In a recent interview she revealed how it was playing King Henry VIII’s second wife Anne Boleyn in a primary school play that awakened her to the thrill of acting.
Mum Wendy even painted a mannequin’s severed head that Daisy held under her arm as she berated the murderous monarch.
She said of the fiesty production: “My teacher thought it would be a good idea to do a school play about Henry and his wives but in the style of TV’s Jeremy Kyle.
“I remember getting into character and being really angry and couldn’t believe he had done this to me after I was his best wife.
“Anyway, afterwards, I was like, ‘Oh, I quite enjoyed that’.”
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Having studied at the National Youth Theatre, Daisy landed her TV debut, aged 17, in a 2016 Christmas special of BBC sitcom Outnumbered.
Other parts soon followed in ITV sitcom Cold Feet, BBC crime drama Silent Witness and BBC historical lesbian drama Gentleman Jack.
But before hitting the big time with Normal People, Daisy admits her life was not easy. She said: “It was quite an anxious time.”
That then changed in the spring of 2020 as Normal People, based on Irish author Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel of the same name, provided X-rated excitement for a country stuck indoors during the pandemic.
The many and graphic sex scenes, awkward conversations — and Connell’s famous neck chain — were all major talking points, if only over the phone, Zoom or in our socially distanced bubbles.
Daisy said: “I was really proud of the work I’d done in that show. I felt more confident in myself.”
But the first of her subsequent projects, Fresh, will shock anyone who has tuned in to Disney+ since it started streaming.
In the 18-rated movie she plays very unlucky-in-love Noa — locked up by her cannibal boyfriend Steve, who she met after deciding to give him her number rather than go on another disastrous app date.
The material is more eye-popping than even Normal People’s bedroom gymnastics — including one moment where Noa sinks her teeth into Steve’s manhood.
Daisy said: “It was on the call sheet as ‘Noa chomps Steve’s d***’. They used chopped-up peach and fruit for the flesh that I spit up.”
For singleton Daisy, the film shines a light on the dangers of internet dating.
She said: “We live with an awareness of threat that is just so ingrained and normal that you don’t even clock it.”
She also has a problem with dating apps because everyone is judged on their profiles.
She said: “We ‘shop’ for each other now. It really preys on self-esteem. It’s terrifying.”
While filming Fresh, in Canada, she was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Bafta for her performance in Normal People.
But she felt nervous about doing a US accent for the film, which is set in Portland, Oregon.
She said: “Filming was quite stressful and I found it quite scary doing my accent. And when I got home, there was no one to hug.”
After that it was down to New Orleans and Louisiana to film Where The Crawdads Sing in alligator-infested swamps.
Then it was back to Canada, to shoot Under The Banner Of Heaven, about the 1984 real-life murders of Brenda Lafferty and her 15-year-old child Erica. Daisy portrays Brenda, who had her throat cut by her extremist Mormon in-laws.
The series was created by Olympic diving champ Tom Daley’s Oscar-winning US husband Dustin Lance Black.
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Daisy is already in talks about new roles — and also hopes one day to direct.
One thing is for sure, life will never be normal again.
Paul: Fame is nuts
By Emma Pietras
DAISY’S Normal People co-star Paul Mescal also went from being a relative unknown to lockdown heart-throb almost overnight.
The smash-hit 2020 show was hunky Irish actor Paul’s first TV role and the 26-year-old has seen his career boom.
Talking about his rise to fame, Paul said: “It’s nuts – it’s one thing for me because I feel like I have some degree of control of it, but I think for my parents it has been a culture shock.”
He made his big-screen debut last year in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, alongside Dakota Johnson and Olivia Colman.
He has also starred in movies Aftersun and God’s Creatures, with both winning critical acclaim at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
The next year is set to be a busy one for him as he has bagged a number of leading roles in upcoming films – including Strangers, based on a 1987 Japanese novel, with Claire Foy, Jamie Bell and Fleabag’s Andrew Scott.
He is also set to star in a contemporary film adaptation of the opera Carmen, with Fast & Furious star Elsa Pataky; Irish thriller Bring Them Down; and romantic drama The History Of Sound with The Crown’s Josh O’Connor as gay lovers during World War One.
Paul, also a talented singer, has reportedly recently got engaged to US folk-rock star Phoebe Bridgers.
