Sally Rooney fans all over Trinity’s campus fell to their knees on April 1st, 2025 when the DU Geographical Society posted that a TV adaption of Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo, would be filming at Trinity College Dublin and were opening a casting call to TCD’s Geography, Geoscience, and Engineering students.
Just a day later, students would once again be brought to their knees when it came to light that the announcement had been purely an April Fools prank orchestrated by Chairperson of the DU Geographical Society and fourth year Geography and political science student Sophie Cantwell-Kelly.
This interview, hastily set up by a completely and totally not gullible Senior Masthead, was initially intended to get the scoop on the series and Trinity’s participation in it. However, after some critical thinking skills and a look at the calendar’s date, the idea behind the interview quickly pivoted into something else entirely. Speaking with Cantwell-Kelly, it became clear that behind the joke was a serious message about the importance of the place where Geography students call home – the Freeman Library.
Cantwell-Kelly tells me that April Fool’s prank came to her, “really last minute, I was trying to think of something believable but also exciting”. The form came together quickly with the help of her sister, a previous member of the Geographical Society, and soon 74 people had fallen victim to it, filling it out in hopes of a silver screen debut. Cantwell-Kelly says, “‘loads of people who have read Intermezzo and are really big Sally Rooney fans came up to me and were like this is so exciting”, continuing, “people believe what they want to believe”.
She tells me that one of her particularly excited friends has been carrying around a copy of Intermezzo since it came out and was hugely disappointed they were graduating before the supposed filming began. “I’m terrified to tell people”, she tells me, “I’ve had so much texting ‘this better not be a joke’, the response to the form just had me floored.”
The form, posted to the Geographical Society’s Instagram read, “Trinity College Dublin has agreed to collaborate with Element Pictures in allowing access to the Freeman Library and the Museum Building entrance foyer for filming, which will take place between January-May 2026. Before extending the casting call to the public, Element Pictures has offered Trinity College Dublin Geography, Geoscience, and Engineering students the unique opportunity to be involved in the project as an extra”.
The google form also asked about previous acting experience to which Cantwell-Kelly says she was “absolutely delighted to hear so many people got involved in productions”. She tells me that in the responses, there were mentions of primary school adverts, RTÉ documentaries, and even someone who had once had the role of Billy Eliot’s mother in a production of Billy Eliot. She says,“ I’m thrilled so many people are in touch with their artistic side”.
Crucially, the form stated, “We are working with Iris Möller and the administrative team to ensure that any payment received for use of the building will go towards rewiring The Freeman and providing more plug sockets. Your work will therefore go straight back into improving your student experience and keeping The Freeman a Geography space”.
The Freeman, Cantwell-Kelly tells me, is the geography library located in the Museum building, open solely for students in a small number of courses including geography, geoscience, and engineering. “It’s a really important thing for geographers” she says, “because it’s where most of the literature is for geography students”. It also has specific access to previous publications which Cantwell-Kelly calls “really helpful”. She points out that as a final year, she has particularly been putting these resources to use.
Home to about 4,000 books, according to the website, The Freeman was named after the first head of the discipline, Walter Freeman, who left his geographical library to the course upon his death. The library also houses a large collection of sheet maps, over 900 original theses, and decades worth of core geographical journals.
The Freeman, Cantwell-Kelly shares, is a small space, holding a maximum of 40 students for courses that amass to over 400 students. The small space can be an asset, Cantwell-Kelly tells me, as you are constantly surrounded by people in your course. There has also been a push for inclusivity, she says, as in her first years, the library was only open to first years one day a week. The library, she continues, is “so important for the geography department. When we ask alumni what they will miss about Trinity, a lot of people without fail say the Freeman”.
Unfortunately, after suffering campus-wide budget cuts, the library currently does not have a librarian, leaving volunteer students to pick up the slack. As well as this, Cantwell-Kelly tells me “At the moment, we have maybe seven plug sockets for 40 seats. We make do with two extension cables but it obviously makes it a bit harder to access”.
She continues, sharing “A big project we’ve been trying to get off the ground this year is thinking about ways we can update it, with funding through alumni support”. She warns, “I’m not an electrician, but we’d like to rewire and update it a little while also keeping the old-world feel”. This improvement would provide a better working environment for more students across the three disciplines.
Cantwell-Kelly is hopeful that as well as pranking her fellow students, the joke calls attention to the DU Geographical itself, which has over 200 active members this year. Cantwell-Kelly tells me that the society and the discipline is “Not just rocks and rivers, it is economic geography, it is history, it is cultural, it is policy and it is migration”.
She additionally hopes the joke will highlight the importance of The Freeman and demonstrate the necessity for support for the library, as well as call attention to the need to protect discipline-specific research and study spaces as a means to advance student’s academic and social life.
