Sally Rooney'sBeautiful World, Where Are YouWill Not Get a Screen Adaptation: 'Not Where I Belonged'

Mar. 15, 2025

Sally Rooney and her third novel, ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’.Photo:Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency/Alamy; Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency/Alamy; Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Sally Rooney’s third novel will not be following in the footsteps ofNormal PeopleandConversations with Friends.

In an interview withThe New York Timespublished Sept. 21, the author, 33, shared that she has no plans to adaptBeautiful World, Where Are Youfor the small screen.

“So far, I have decided not to accept any offers to option the rights for that book,” she said. “I felt like it was just time to take a break from that and let the book be its own thing for a while.”

The book, which came out in 2021, tells the story of Alice and Eileen, two best friends on the cusp of their thirties who find themselves on very different trajectories. As the summer approaches, they exchange emails about art, friendship, the world around them and the complicated love affairs unfolding in their own lives.

Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones in ‘Normal People’.Enda Bowe/Hulu

“The experience of working on the first one [Normal People] had been, in so many ways, amazing — the team of people involved in it. But it did also feel like a really big job,” she said. “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 that world was not where I belonged. I felt like, okay, now I know that my books are where I belong, and that’s all that I want to be doing."

Normal People, released on Hulu in April 2020, became an instant hit during theCOVID-19pandemic and skyrocketed the careers of its starsPaul Mescal, a2023 Oscar nominee, andDaisy Edgar-Jones.

The series was adapted from Rooney’s 2018 Booker Prize nominee that tells the story of a complicated romance that develops between two students, Marianne (Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Mescal), from high school through to college.

Meanwhile,Conversations with Friends, Rooney’s debut novel released in 2017, got its screen adaptation in 2022 starringJoe Alwyn,Jemima Kirke, Alison Oliver and Sasha Lane. Rooney toldThe New York Timesthat the reason she chose “not to be so involved” in theadaptation ofConversations with Friendswas because she was working on her third novel, at the time.

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Sally Rooney.Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty

Simone Padovani/Awakening/Getty

Rooney’s much-anticipated fourth novel,Intermezzo, is set to be released on Sept. 24 and focuses on two brothers, Peter and Ivan, as they grieve the death of their father while navigating very different romantic relationships as well.

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source: people.com