Paul Mescal, Venetia Bowe, Eanna Hardwicke and Clare Dunne in the Irish Times 50 People to Watch feature from January 2020. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
“It takes on a whole new meaning because it’s your county pride. It’s your parish pride. Paddy, one of the directors, who played football until this year, would say: ‘You might play for a club and win no silverware. You may not get to the heights. But you still give it your all. You give it your life.’ That is an interesting intersection.”
“I was probably a bit precocious as a kid,” he says. “I used to do dances and make my mom and dad watch it. I got into this doing impressions actually. I used to rip off Gift Grub. I remember doing it at a christening once – and people were giving me cash to do more. I liked having an audience. I got lucky. I did youth theatre at a pretty serious level. We were doing Alexander Technique and Stanislavski.
Hardwicke was educated at Ashton School before going on to study at the Lir National Academy of Dramatic Art. He has spent the past few years biffed about the world, but you still wouldn’t mistake him for anything other than a product of Cork. Ashton gave the nation a number of distinguished Church of Ireland clerics. But he is not of that community?
Back when he was posing for that photograph, the buzz around Normal People was already audible. But nobody could have guessed the phenomenon that would develop. It will now demand a place within – indeed a photo on the cover of – any study of popular culture during the pandemic. Connell’s chain. The furious calls to Liveline. It was in the lockdown headlines even more than sourdough starter. Paul Mescal and costar Daisy Edgar-Jones were on every magazine cover.
A lot of my friends have gone over [to London]. There has been a migration again in the last two or three years. And I felt like I wanted to see a new place. I wanted to experience that