Joe Alwyn’s newest project lands him in the spotlight for WSJ. Magazine. The British actor appears in a feature for the magazine’s May 2022 issue that hits newsstands on April 30th. Alwyn talks about taking on the character of Nick Conway in the television adaptation of Sally Rooney’s book, Conversations with Friends. He also addresses the endless Taylor Swift engagement rumors.
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Conversations with Friends is based on Sally Rooney’s breakthrough book, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. The book, released in 2017, is her brightest work and earned her cult “great millennial author” reputation. It’s a contemporary love quadrangle with Nick Conway as the lone male member. The adaptation, which will air on Hulu in May, sticks to the story’s beats but adds new life to Rooney’s spare words.
Joe Alwyn as Nick Conway
Rooney describes Nick Conway as “luminously attractive” and “looking like an advertisement for cologne.” Stepping into Nick’s shoes, Joe Alwyn confesses, it’s “the first time I shaved in like two years.” Preparing for the role, Alwyn explains, “I tried to do a little bit of excercise but I wasn’t, like, eating all the chicken and doing all that protein shake stuff.”
Alwyn Talks Private Life
An actor that is known for keeping his privacy, Alwyn explains, “We live in a culture that people expect so much to be given. So that if you’re not posting all the time about what you’re doing, how you’re spending a day or how you made a breakfast, does that make you a recluse?” The British actor continues, “I’d also like to feel slightly less guarded sometimes in interviews or in whatever kind of interactions, but it’s just a knee- jerk response to the culture we live in.”
On pesky engagement rumors, Alwyn jokes, “If I had a pound for every time I think I’ve been told I’ve been engaged, then I’d have a lot of pound coins.” Alwyn says, “I mean, the truth is, if the answer was yes, I wouldn’t say, and if the answer was no, I wouldn’t say.”