Lenny Abrahamson On ‘Conversations With Friends’ & ‘Normal People’: “They’d Have Attracted A Tiny Audience If They Were Feature Films”

deadline.com:

Conversations With Friends and Normal People would have attracted a “tiny audience” if they had been made as features instead of TV shows, according to director Lenny Abrahamson, who said program-makers should trust audiences to enjoy “arthouse TV.”On the eve of BBC Three/Hulu’s Conversations With Friends’ release, the Oscar-nominated Room and Frank director reflected on how the independent film and high-end TV sectors have developed drastically in the past decade, blurring the boundaries and allowing “classical arthouse” to make its way to the small screen.“The wisdom a decade ago was that high-end TV had to be sexy to keep people from changing the channel but it’s remarkable now how people are prepared to commit to something thoughtful and arthouse in its execution,” he told Deadline.“Had we done Normal People or Conversations With Friends as a long feature it would have had a tiny audience.

It’s really hard to get those films to stay in cinemas and audiences tend to mainly go out to see bigger tentpoles now.”Abrahamson praised general TV audiences for being “much more progressive than distributors, filmmakers and producers think they are.”“Our hunch was to trust them but in advance of Normal People we were still worried that the audience would be very demarcated and that people might not give it enough time,” he added. “I think we stood out for being a bit quieter.”That show was a revelation, winning a BAFTA and parachuting leads Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones to stardom, and Element Pictures’ Conversations With Friends is the broadcaster and producer’s second Sally Rooney adaptation.

Both have been helmed by Abrahamson, with Leanne Welham taking over second block directing duties from Normal People’s Hettie