The Deceived writer Lisa McGee says Paul Mescal had a 'buzz' before Normal People

Derry Girls writer Lisa McGee has said Paul Mescal already had a “buzz” following him before Normal People.

McGee’s new psychological thriller The Deceived, co-written with her husband Tobias Beer, stars Mescal as Sean McKeough in an ensemble that includes Emmett J Scanlan, Catherine Walker, Emily Reid, Shelly Conn and Ian McElhinney.

The four-part Channel 5 thriller follows a young student named Ophelia (Reid) studying English at Cambridge University who becomes entangled in an affair with her professor Michael (Scanlan), which prompts her to follow him to his hometown of Donegal.

There, she discovers the truth about Michael’s wife Roisin (Walker), a famous writer, and when their affair takes a tragic turn, Ophelia begins to question her own sanity.

Mescal’s character McKeough is a local firefighter and builder in Donegal who becomes a close confidante of Ophelia.

“Our casting director had told us, ‘This guy, he's really exciting,’” McGee told Standard Online and other reporters during a virtual Q&A for The Deceived.

“There was definitely a buzz, but I don't think anybody could have projected what happened,” she said.

Co-star Shelley Conn said she had been reading Normal People during production and pictured Mescal in the role of Connell before she even knew about the BBC adaptation.

“As I read it, I had only met Paul briefly on a press day, but I cast him in my head,” she said. “I had no idea, so when he was cast I said, ‘See! Told you.’”

While McGee is best known for her comedy work as the creator of Derry Girls, her background in drama lent itself to the simmering tensions and psychological warfare of The Deceived.

As the first project she has worked on with her husband, McGee said The Deceived was a result of her and Beer’s shared interest in classic crime and mystery stories.

“We watched a lot of old movies when we first got together - like Gaslight, and Dial M for Murder is probably one of our favorite films, and then Rebecca, which (The Deceived) is heavily influenced by,” she said.

“We were attracted to the idea of doing something modern that had that classical tone to it, and something that could potentially run for a bit longer on TV.”

The Deceived has flickers of supernatural elements, a subject to which McGee and Beer have varied approaches, which they explain is tied to their different backgrounds (McGee is from Derry and Beer was born in Cambridge).

“When I got to know Lisa, and I used to go to Ireland a lot initially, what was interesting for me is that there's an ease about talking about the supernatural or the mystical, and it's very much a run of the mill thing, not a big deal to talk about,” he said.

“That was quite unusual for me because that is that isn't my experience growing up in England, and so I was really interested. Lisa always says she believes in ghosts, but she's not frightened of them, because it's not a big deal, whereas I don't believe in them, but I'm terrified because if I saw one, my whole world would be changed.”

McGee added: “Until we first came over to Derry, my mum would say things like, ‘Remember the time your cousin saw the banshee in Buncrana?’ - or something, and (Beer) would be like, ‘what the hell?’

“It's the natural way we are with stuff like that, and sometimes I don't know if the people that tell those stories at home really believe it either - but it's that thing of not letting the truth getting in the way of a good tale.”

For Scanlan, his character of Michael - whose charisma barely conceals his manipulative streak - was an interesting way to explore the concept of gaslighting, coined after the aforementioned classic play and film by Patrick Hamilton.

“It’s the somewhat subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle psychological manipulation of somebody through misdirection or misinformation,” he said.

“It's something that happens quite a lot in this world. And it's probably something that we don't actually touch on as much as we should either, which this show does ever so subtly which I love.”

He continued: “He is charming, narcissistic, he loves power… If you're lucky enough to get multi layered characters that you read in a script, then that's fantastic. And there's no room for fear anytime you're taking on characters like this. That's not the difficult part, because we all wear masks, don't we. I mean, God forbid our social mask slips.”

The Deceived premieres tonight (Monday, August 3) on Channel 5 at 9pm, and rolls out every night this week, concluding on Thursday.