- The way I thought of you playing Laurie had to do
with seeing you with your sister.
- Oh, interesting.
- I remember one day, actually,
she came to some party you were at,
she had a backpack, she looks just like him but a girl.
They started dancing so hard, you and your sister.
And I was watching the two of them
and I was like, "I mean that's Laurie with those girls."
like, that's a little, it just,
I thought there was such a sweetness between you guys.
- I got an awesome older sister.
I got lucky there,
I got lucky in the older sister department.
Makes me feel like I wanna go like that,
but that doesn't make any sense.
(laughing)
- Meryl, queen Meryl,
she just said she was gonna be in the movie.
And she said she was gonna play the battle axe,
Aunt March,
and would I write her a part?
Then Saoirse sort of told me
she was gonna be in the movie. (laughs)
And she'd be Jo, and she was right.
Timothée was always Laurie to me,
and Laura and Chris are people
I've wanted to work with forever.
Laura was the actor I would just imitate all the time
when I acted, I would imitate Laura.
You could actually look at my performances,
and you were just like, "Oh, I see where she got this from.
"It's from Laura." (laughs)
And then, these two, they were brought to my attention.
'Sharp Objects' and 'Lady Macbeth'.
It felt like everything fell into place.
It didn't really feel like there were lots of choices
I was considering, it was just like,
"Oh my God, that, yes!
"And this!"
- I'm so sick of people saying
that love is just all a woman is fit for.
I'm so sick of it!
But I'm so lonely.
- [Saoirse] For me, one of the indications
of me just liking something as I read it,
is that I just automatically
start to read the dialogue out loud,
and I don't even realize that I'm doing it.
I think if there's a script that I'm not as interested in,
it takes more concentration (laughs)
for me to get through it.
But if it's something that I just find irresistible
and I have to say it out loud,
then I kind of know that it's something that I have to do.
- I have to be inspired by the character
that I'm playing in some way,
or the people that I'm gonna be hanging out with.
I think you forget that you're gonna be that person
for two or three months, and you have to think like them
and walk like them and argue and fight their battles.
And I think that's always something when I'm reading,
if I suddenly become in love with this character,
I'm like, "Yep, that's you, done."
- It's also really exciting to witness
a path and career of an artist
where after their first movie,
you hear the name Greta Gerwig,
and you say, "Yes!
"Whatever she wants to do, I wanna be there!"
(laughing)
- [Greta] Well we had actually two weeks of rehearsal,
but Florence wasn't here, sadly.
- I missed it because I was burning someone in a temple
in Budapest, but then I came and I was a bit worried
that I'd missed out on,
rehearsal time is like the time that you love everyone
and go out and have meals, and whenever you remember
what was the most exciting point in the film,
it's always usually around the rehearsal period.
And I missed all of that and I was like, "Oh no!
"I'm missing all this relationship time?"
And then actually, you guys just sat on me
and cuddled me straight away.
- It was amazing, I think we started to discuss actually and
realize that actually it was sort of right that
Flo wasn't there
because Amy is sort of her own separate thing.
Even sort of socially I think in the way she thinks,
she's like, "Do you know what's going on in town?"
Everything that happened seemed to be quite right.
- It happened for a reason. - Yeah.
It happened for a reason, for sure.
- I remember early though that you, you, and you and Emma,
there was the day where you guys all performed
for each other, I made you perform for each other--
- Oh God. - Oh gosh.
- But it was actually wonderful.
- What did you, you sang Fleetwood Mac? (laughs)
- I spoke-- - Did you sing "Landslide?"
- I spoke the "Landslide."
Because I wouldn't really know any monologues
or anything like that.
You did a really great one. - You did a monologue!
- (laughs) Yes. - Yeah!
- You came out as a character! - It was really good.
- Somehow I like the rehearsal process
to be a way that everyone feels comfortable
being silly in front of each other.
Because so much of acting is allowing yourself
to just go too far and then pull back.
So I felt like once we were on set,
they were working like clockwork with all these lines,
but then also I felt like people felt free
to be like, "Maybe I don't say this, or maybe I go too far,
"or maybe I pull back."
To kind of find these places that there's life,
because they felt comfortable with each other.
I mean, that's the purpose of rehearsal, I think.
- Saoirse and I, A: wrestle all the time anyway,
and this one day we were doing the scene
where I've burnt the book and she comes home
and knows it's me,
and every single time we had been kind of
going through this scene,
we were just so grabby with each other,
and it was at the last point of the day,
and we had one shot left which was
she hits me and then I crawl away. (laughs)
So we rehearsed it and I just like pulled her close,
and I said, "Hit me in the face."
(laughing)
And she was like, "All right, okay."
And we did it, and it was great.
And afterwards, we both jumped up, we were like, "Yeah!"
- But also, as I smacked her,
I just saw this tear (laughs) fall out
and she was like, (breathes heavily)
and then we cut, and I was like, "Are you okay?!"
and she was like, "Yeah, I'm great!"
It was like she had been given steroids or something.
- It was great fun.
And that's kind of what was so amazing about set
was just like, we were allowed to be these wild beasts, in a sense
and just love each other when we needed to
and wrestle each other when we needed to,
and that is just totally what having siblings is like.
- [Saoirse] It's such a weird life that we have
where we go from one very intense experience to the next.
We have this whole life with a group of people
for like two to three months.
And I know one of the things that I find,
before almost every project that I do,
because I'm scared of it, I'm like,
"Maybe I shouldn't do it, maybe I just shouldn't,
"maybe I shouldn't do it, it's probably not right
"that I do this, and I'm not gonna be able
"to bring this to it, and everything they want me to do,
"I won't be able to do."
And "I actually don't wanna do it."
And I almost talk myself out of it for a second,
but it's because I'm scared of it.
And then you do it anyway
and you end up having this great experience,
and so you just keep going through that
again and again for as long as you're lucky to work.