Saoirse Ronan did not try to “make a splash” with her recent comment shutting down Paul Mescal and Eddie Redmayne — but there’s no telling what the internet will take hold of.
“The reaction has been wild. It’s definitely not something that I had expected,” Ronan, 30, shared during a Wednesday, October 30 appearance on The Ryan Tubridy Show on Virgin Radio UK. “I do think there’s something really telling about the society that we’re in right now and about how open women want to be with the men in their lives.”
Ronan was seated next to Mescal, 28, Redmayne, 42, and Denzel Washington for a recent appearance on The Graham Norton Show. The Irish actress was quick to tell the men how it is after they were making jokes about an attack scene Redmayne performed in his upcoming show The Day of the Jackal.
“You can use your phone if someone’s attacking you, the butt of your phone,” Redmayne said. Mescal responded, “Who’s actually going to think about that, though? If someone attacked me, I’m not going to go, ‘phone.’”
While Mescal’s comment elicited laughs from the crowd, Ronan (who was there to promote her films The Outrun and Blitz) gave some wisdom to the men.
“That’s what girls have to think about all the time,” she said. “Am I right ladies?”
The crowd was quick to clap for her while Mescal and Redmayne were immediately silenced.
“So many men and women that I know from all over the world have gotten in touch with me about this one comment, which is, again, I would urge people, please, please, please to watch this in context,” Ronan said during Wednesday’s radio interview. “Please watch the whole interview or watch at least that part of the conversation, because it really wasn’t about … the boys weren’t sort of, like, debunking anything that I was saying.”
Ronan explained that the conversation — which was, albeit, in a public forum — felt like when she’s at dinner with friends.
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“I will always make the point that, well, this is actually an experience that we go through every single day, 100 percent,” she continued, noting that Mescal is one of the “very dear friends” she has had this conversation with.
“I think the fact that there was a moment like that that happened on a show like Graham Norton, which is something that the entire nation channels in to watch and even overseas, it’s something that people tune into,” she continued. “It seems to have had an accessibility which seems to have really gained traction, which I think is amazing.”
Ronan added: “It’s opening a conversation and again, hopefully it’s allowing more and more women to just be like, ‘Well, yeah, actually, let’s talk about our experience.’”
