Sally Rooney ‘Decided Not to Accept Any Offers’ for Screen Adaptation of Third Novel, Says ‘Normal People’ Discourse Was ‘A Lot’: ‘I Felt That World Was Not Where I Belonged’

Sally Rooney, who penned the novels-turned-series “Normal People” and “Conversations With Friends,” isn’t jumping at the chance for future TV adaptations of her work.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, the author said she has “decided not to accept any offers to option the rights” for her third book, “Beautiful World, Where Are You?,” which released in 2021. When asked why not, Rooney replied: “I felt like it was just time to take a break from that and let the book be its own thing for a while.”

“Normal People,” starring Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones in career-making turns, became a critical and commercial hit when it released in the U.S. on Hulu in April 2020. Rooney’s debut novel, “Conversations With Friends,” was then also adapted by the same team, but reviews were more mixed. Rooney told the New York Times that she wasn’t as involved in the “Conversations With Friends” adaptation because she was busy writing “Beautiful World, Where Are You?” — but she doesn’t have any regrets.

“The experience of working on [‘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 told the Times. “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, ‘OK, now I know that my books are where I belong, and that’s all that I want to be doing.'”

Rooney’s fourth book, “Intermezzo,” focuses on two brothers who are grieving the loss of their father while exploring two very different romantic relationships.

On writing from the male perspective, Rooney said: “I’m aware that people think that my work is heavily autobiographical, and in fact, it isn’t. It felt like they were just fictional characters, like all my other fictional characters, and I was intrigued by them. So the question of gender felt very secondary, but there were moments where I thought, Have I got any of this right?”

“Intermezzo” hits bookshelves on Tuesday.