Joe Alwyn Is Getting Bored of Classic Tuxedos.

And after a quick Google of Melissa’s husband, the famous actor Nick Conway (played by the famous actor Joe Alwyn, aka Mr Taylor Swift) – Frances sneeringly sends a screenshot to Bobbi saying: “Have you seen her trophy husband?” – the pair find themselves having dinner in Melissa and Nick’s extremely Grand Designs house (two bathrooms!) in Monkstown, the posh outskirts of the city. It turns out that Melissa is a writer who just happens to love wild swimming (shocker) and would the girls like to come and experience the magical, ethereal wonders of a dip in the icy waves of Dublin Bay?

Bobbi, with the subtlety of an anvil, also throws out that the girls used to fuck, but not anymore: “We dropped the fucking but kept the poetry”. “It was very sweet… but ruthless.” We find out that Frances is the writer and Bobbi is “the muse”, something which Frances wrinkles her nose up at Bobbi assigning herself. “I loved it,” she tells them of their performance.

While we aren’t given the name of their stage duo (Frobbi? Brances? No, something far more intellectual than an X Factor portmanteau, surely), they’re denouncing the hollow nature of modern female empowerment, spitting out verses about the misaligned reclaiming of pole dancing as feminist.īut who’s this glamazon watching the budding Kae Tempests? It’s Melissa ( Girls’ Jemima Kirke) who swoops on in at them at the bar afterwards. The next night sees them on stage for the first time. She agrees to text Frances when she gets home, a small action that depressingly will be familiar to every woman on the planet. When Frances wakes, she holds Bobbi’s gaze for just a beat too long, which is perhaps what prompts Bobbi to announce that she should head home. We join them at the best time for university students – the months-long summer! – and after sitting her last exam, Frances is ready to P.A.R.T.Y.: “Yay, summer!” she says, and the girls head to the nearest offy to load up on the student essentials: crisps and 2-4-€10 bottles of white wine.īut their idea of a wild party differs from most freshers, as it’s more the middle-aged, let’s-chill-in-front-of-a-box-set vibe, and they’re next shown asleep on each other’s shoulders on the sofa in Frances’ place. The girls are riffing on their duet slam poetry ahead of a performance, and there’s an easy-going chemistry between the two, as it turns out that as well as being BFFs, they’re also ex-girlfriends. This is personified as we’re introduced to Frances (Alison Oliver) and Bobbi (Sasha Lane), the two polar-opposite best friends at the heart of what’s set to be a sort of quartet of love affairs. It’s obvious that Rooney – who herself studied at Trinity College – finds it a rich setting to pull stories from, and she’s right, as higher-education teens veer from being so invincible and obnoxiously self-assured to being genuinely bewildered as to where they even begin to fit in this adult world. Conversations With Friends could be another storyline that runs concurrent to Marianne and Connell’s, and perhaps it’s pleasing to think of them all existing in the same Rooniverse at the same time.

Conversations with friends cast frances