"It’s not fictional to me, it’s real, and I was really nervous portraying it."
Normal People has taken the world by storm since it premiered on BBC Three last weekend.
This week star Paul Mescal gave an interview to The Independent about his portrayal of Connell.
Connell Waldron is popular, handsome and intelligent.
However, when he leaves secondary school for Trinity College he struggles with social skills and his mental health.
One of the main plot points in the book and show is Connell's depression.
Following the suicide of his school friend Rob, Connell spirals eventually turning to Marianne for help.
Speaking about this storyline Mescal said, "Three people killed themselves at my school. So it’s not fictional to me, it’s real, and I was really nervous portraying it."
Mescal remembered his mother taking him out of school for a week after the first death because he, "wasn’t equipped to cope with that level of devastation."
"I wasn’t particularly close to the person, but that kind of sadness permeates through an entire year group."
"The distinct feeling I remember having at the time is that I didn’t know how to perform sadness in the way I saw other people around me being sad."
"I was nervous people didn’t think I was sad enough. I found the whole thing incredibly confusing and, in hindsight, formative."
If you have been affected by any of the issues mentioned in this article you can contact Samaritans:
Last week Normal People star Daisy Edgar-Jones spoke about snogging the air in her first audition. You can read about that here.
And read what both Daisy and Paul had to say about filming those intimate scenes here.
