Saoirse Ronan Joins Brittany Broski's Royal Court

But before we do that, I'm a little lappin'. I'm lappin'. You did your research, girl. I tried, I learned how to read for this. Welcome to Royal Court, the show where pop culture royalty compete for a spot on my trusted council. I am your host and queen, Lady Brittany of House Broski. And today, I am joined by million time Oscar nominee, Lady Saoirse Ronan. Please welcome Lady Saoirse. Thank you, Charlene. Thank you, darling. How fair the waves from Ireland. Cold and wet, you know. Normal. Normal water. Water situation. Well, walk me through this beautiful regalia you've got on. Yeah, well, I put a lot of thought, I think I put too much thought into it before I came on. But I thought, I didn't want to go like too fashion, but I also didn't want it to look shit. Of course, of course. So I wanted to find like the regal, sort of like chicness of it. I think you found it. Do you think I did it? I think you found it. Do you like the crown? I do love the crown. You stole it off of my sort of head, but that's okay. That's fine. That's what I do. Just this one time, I'll let it slide. That's my vibe. Well, Lady Saoirse, are you ready? You went a bit Irish there. She's going to be an Irish royal today. Yeah, I'm like, let me lock in. Are you ready for the trials set before you today? Yeah, I was born ready. Without further ado, let the trials begin. Oh my God. Saoirse, you enjoy honoring the Scottish people through your work, true or false? Absolutely true. If that's true, then when are you starting production on the Shrek prequel? You know what's so funny about that? I don't know if you know. Are we allowed to talk? You know what's so funny about that is that when I was a kid and when Shrek 2 came out, I hadn't, best one by far, because there's been like six now, I think. That was by far the best one. Yeah, they don't count. When Shrek 2 came out, I hadn't started acting yet and there was this Irish radio show and they were giving out holidays to Disney World in Florida. And the criteria was that you had to ring up this man called Jerry Ryan and you had to do an impersonation of a character from Shrek 2, the movie. And I did it and I did the gingerbread man and I fucking won. I won. I'm treated. So Shrek 2 is like in my soul. It's part of your lore. It's part of who I am. You've interacted with a number of wild creatures on set before. Seals, lambs, Timothee Chalamet. Are there any animals left on the bucket list? I don't know why a tiger has come into my head. That's scary. It's really dangerous. I always wanted to swim with dolphins from when I was young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know where they hold onto their fins. Yeah. So it's so magical. Yeah, that's what I think I'd like to do. You want one of these? I'm gonna take a lot. Exactly that. In the film, The Lovely Bones, you're murdered by Stanley Tucci. Yeah. How does it feel to live my dream? It's, I feel like I was channeling you at the time. Thank you. And do you think that we delivered? Yeah, I saw myself in that moment. It was a beautiful, yeah. Chills. Is it the teeth? Is that what does it for you? Yeah. Yeah, I think actually. Yeah, the book. That sort of like pearly white book mouth. Scary veneer white. Yeah, like not quite being able to pronounce his words. I love it. That does it for me, really. Yeah. Most people don't know that you were actually born in America. I was. Not in Burbank where we are now, unfortunately. The capital of America. Yeah. The Royal Burbank Realm. I feel like I'm asking for everyone in the room. How do you feel about NASCAR? I don't know anything about NASCAR. I'm actually, that makes me feel good. Didn't Will Ferrell do a film about NASCAR? Ricky Bobby. What's that, Talladega Nights? Yeah. 100% That's all I know. That's all you need to know. There's nothing more to know. I mean, if it's that, then sign me up. Do you think Mary would have made a good guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race? Yeah, I think she would. I mean, she loves the gays. Exactly. Yeah. Ally. What? She's an ally. She's an ally, absolutely. What? I thought you said, I thought you went LA and I was like, no, she wasn't. That wasn't her vibe. Texan. Sorry, accent. Funny accent you've got. I can't understand you. Why do you talk like that? Why do you talk like, you know, when I was younger and I'd come over to the States and I'd go to a restaurant and they'd bring the bread and I'd say, oh, could I get some butter with that, please? And they'd be like, what? I'd be like, could I get some butter to go with the bread? It's like, there's literally two things it could be, olive oil or butter, like figure it out. She's like, I don't, and I'd always have to go, can I get butter with the bread? And she's like, sure. Oh, why didn't you just say that? Why didn't you just say that the whole time? Is water one as well? Water is one. Water. It's not that different. It's really not. You say water. Water. It's the same, it's the same word. How does it feel to know that Blitz is on track to dethrone Finding Nemo as the best Find My Son movie of all time? No, don't let it happen. No. It mustn't, we must stop this. Don't take it away from Finding Nemo. Don't take it away from Nemo. No, I wouldn't want that. I wouldn't want that. I'd actually go out of my way to dissuade people from watching the film if that was gonna happen. That's really kind. Sorry, Steve McQueen. It's all love, but. It's all love, but to a point. You were in talks to play Weird Barbie in the Barbie movie, true or false? True. When you'd play with dolls growing up, you made up tragic backstories for your Polly Pockets. Yeah, I did. Did they have like arrest warrants, things like that? They did. They used to have affairs with one another. So there was Polly and there was Woody from Toy Story, and he was around the same height as Polly because I had the life-size Polly Pockets, I didn't really. I found it hard to play with the little ones. You couldn't really do that much with them. Big, big bare hands to play with. Yeah, right, you just really grab on. So I used to play with them, but then Woody in like season three had an affair with Polly's best friend when they all went to college together. It was definitely like inspired by Saved by the Bell, I would say. I feel like a lot of the influences came from that. Season three is crazy. And then what happened was season three got like wild. And then Polly got in a car crash and she lost her arm, which actually happened to my Polly Pocket in real life. My dog got her and ripped her arm off. So I had to come up. It's fine. I came up with a storyline for it. I made it work. And he realized how much he loved her and had to sort of like worm his way back in. While she was in the hospital bed. Oh my God. Yeah, it was very intense. But then they came back together. No, I know. I actually think I could. It was a great show. Just for me. So all that to say, what would your weird Barbie storyline be? Did you give it any thought before you? What would I want my storyline to be? I would want Timothy to be in it because it would feel weird if I was doing something without Timmy. And maybe I'm like giving him a makeover or something. Like get him out of those track suits, you know? Give him some proper clothes. Adidas, we're done. Brush your hair, maybe. Lady Saoirse, you've passed. Well, Lady Saoirse, you've done amazing so far. But now I just want to hang out. If that's okay. I'd love that. But before we do that, I'm a little lappin, I'm lappin. You did your research, girl. I tried. I learned how to read for this. So I think we have to eat something. Squires! What is it gonna be? Oh, it's a tiramisu! How did you know? Oh, what a surprise. It's also sellotaped to the platter, which is classy and safe. Any Michelin star restaurant, they do this actually. So if you guys have not known. I am genuinely very hungry, so. I'm very glad. What do you love about this so much? I like that it's Italian. I like that it's got layers to it. I like that it's easy to make. I like that anyone can make it. Yeah, that's delicious. Okay, I've got a question really quick, if you don't mind. You love Below Deck. I do love Below Deck. Have I talked about that publicly? But I do. We found it. We found it out. Do you, are you a Bravo girl? Yeah, I mean, I dip in and out, I would say. Yeah. I dip in and out. It's more about the show for me. True. It's a lot of lore. I'm not a Housewives girl. See, I wanna get into Housewives because I know Rihanna's into Housewives, and I feel like if that's- Charli XCX is too. Is Charli XCX, oh my God. I loved her one so much. I love that she came in, she was like, what the fuck is all this? She had no idea what was going on. I prefer it. That light came on, she said, what the fuck is going- What is this place? What was her snack? A cigarette. She is such a lady, I love her. Can you teach me something that you know a lot about? What's something that you're like, I know so much about this? What do I know a lot about? My career. I like to cook. Okay. Oh, I know loads about Kristen Wiig. I know loads about Bridesmaids. I was like, what do I know about? You've heard a little ditty called Kristen Wiig? Yeah. Yeah, she's an American icon. Have you had her on? No, but could you imagine? No. I'd be scared. Yeah, you should be. She's my hero. And I told her that recently because I've met Kristen quite a few times, and I'm always trying to hold back. I don't want to freak her out. But we were both at the Emmys recently, and I had one too many goblets of wine. Chalices of beer. Chalices, and I was just like, you know that I channel you in almost every performance I give? And she was like, what? But even in the new movie about you being an alcoholic, I was like, yeah, even. And I genuinely have done. She's very important to me. In what way? In the opening sequence of The Out Run, which is like really tragic and dark, but I am playing it like I think I'm hilarious. And I was basically channeling the airplane scene in Bridesmaids, but it's like taking a turn. That's actually so cute. Honestly, if you watched it, you'd be like, yeah, I can see that. Yeah, the parallels. It's like the same actions side by side. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But you have to have her on the show. She's amazing. You have been in so many book adaptations to screen. Are you a big reader? I'm a pretty big reader, yeah. What type of genres? Do you do a lot of like historical memoirs or is it like science fiction fantasy? No, I don't love science fiction, but there's a brilliant author called Benjamin Myers, this UK writer who, his writing is quite dark, but it's so, and this isn't debunking his sort of standard of writing. It's so easy to read. Like I'm not a fast reader at all, but I could read his books in a couple of days. So I think he's incredible. I think Anne Enright and Clare Keegan, who are two brilliant Irish authors, I love all of their work. Clare Keegan wrote this book called Small Things Like These. What's actually really nice about starting to produce and develop stuff is that you can read a book knowing that it could potentially turn into something else and you could have a hand in sort of giving it this new life, which is what we did with The Outrun as well, so yeah. What do you think is that deciding factor of like, oh yeah, this could be a movie, or like this is best as a narrative in a book? I think, I mean, with something like The Outrun, it wasn't obviously cinematic. It was very sort of expansive in how she would write about the landscape and her relationship to the land, but we didn't necessarily know if that was going to keep audiences entertained. So I think, you know, in general, there needs to be a pretty strong plot, I think to have a really interesting central character, of course, is key. But I also think that like, you could take a book that maybe has enough elements to it that are interesting and adapted enough that it becomes something that will work on screen. Okay, I've got one more question and then we'll get into the, eat your tiramisu if you really want it. Yeah, I do want a little bit more. I need the sugar. You've played a bunch of different characters from all different places. Do you have an accent that you find very hard to do? I find the Californian accent difficult. That's crazy. Not a valley girl accent, because that's like a caricature, so that's easy to do. But when I had to do Californian Sacramento for Lady Bird, it was really hard. And actually, an RP English accent, I don't know if Daisy spoke about it when she was on the show, but not when you sort of, when everything is very posh. Received pronunciation. It's very easy, yes. Received pronunciation is what that means, darlings. To all the plebs at home. That's really easy to do, but when you're doing just like a regular middle class Southern English accent, a lot of Irish and Scots find that particularly difficult because it has no real melody to it. And the whole point of like middle class England, certainly back in the day, was that you were stripped of all emotion. So that's very hard for us to tap into that. There's no note to it. There's no like muscularity. So I find that accent really difficult as well. That's so interesting. I love that shit. I speak Spanish. Me too. And that literally is like part of the hardest thing that when you learn a new language is the intonation and the like, how do you speak? So I've started learning Italian over the last year. I did an immersive course over the summer. So right before I got married, I went away for two weeks to this little place called Agnone. What a dream though. And it was amazing. And it was just me. I'd never gone off on my own like that before. And I was with people who were way older than me. None of them knew that I was an actor. It was just, it was the best. I'm sure like you as well, you feel like a baby because everything is so new. And the simplest things. Can I have a water? Can I, I feel like, I don't care. Passo, passo, kid. But once you get over that initial fear, you kind of feel like you're flying a little bit. A hundred percent. You go to Spain and I'll go to Italy and we'll pick this up later. We'll meet up in Monaco, it'll be fine. Saoirse, you've passed. Lady Saoirse, you're doing amazing. Are you having fun? I'm having a great time. Well, we're about to end that. This is the part of the show where you create a family crest because you forgot yours, right? You didn't bring yours? Yeah, I didn't bring it to LA. Okay, well, we'll have you make one so that I can own everything you do from here on out. Okay. That's okay? Yeah. No worries. On the shield in front of you, there are four quadrants of little prompts. We'll just have you draw your answers and then I'm gonna ask you some questions. It's very far away. That's all I'd say. It's very far, okay. Do your thing. Amazon set. My throne. Oh, it's so heavy because it's so old. Your mom was on set with you a lot as a child, right? Up until you were like 18. Yeah. How did that affect y'all's relationship? You know, like in your adult years, do you look back at that differently or how was that? I don't look back at it differently. I'm actually having sort of an extra bit of appreciation for her recently because I think she just protected me so much and she gave me this foundation for, I don't know, for the industry, I suppose, just how to handle it and knowing when to question it. So she was amazing. I mean, by the time I got to 18, I was like, you need to leave now. You're embarrassing me. It's time to go. A big theme in the outrun is the healing power of nature, of animals, of the community that can come from what might feel like isolation or seem like isolation. Was shooting this movie in the Orkney Islands healing for you in any way as Saoirse? Yes, it was. I think, it is quite hard to draw and talk. I'm not gonna lie. Never mind, you'll be fine. But it is quite difficult. It's like, I need time to just do this. So by the time we get to Pape, which is the final island that she goes to, which is where Amy Liptraw actually wrote the book, it was so about just immersing yourself in the natural world and learning about it and giving time to it and working the schedule around it. And we would like, like myself and all the girls on the weekend, we would go out and we would like skinny dip in the sea and we'd spend the whole day together. And it was just, I think that more than anything was what I took away from the film was these amazing friendships that I made with these women. Like our costume designer, our hair and makeup designer, our script supervisor, like just these girls that were sort of at this point where they'd been working for long enough but they still have this hunger. And we all, we wanna make movies together, we wanna do stuff together. It's just, it's brilliant. It's really great. And about stuff that matters too. You know, like that's such a, it's a topic that unfortunately a lot of people can relate to having a loved one who's gone through that or you've had to see them through that. You know, it's like the ripple effect of a film like that is so, wow. And to bring it to life with the girls. With the girls. And it really has been like, even to be able to promote something like that and know that like you built it from the ground up, it's so much more gratifying. Sure. You know, and making it with your friends and going like, this is the little film that we made that seems to be really connecting with people. Did that, cause like you mentioned, you have a producing credit on this movie. Yeah. How was that with your like acting process? Did it give you any insight into that a little more? Absolutely. Or did it kind of fuck it? Okay. No, it didn't fuck it at all. I think that it gave me a perspective that other producers just didn't have. Because the thing is with actors is that really, you're usually some of the most experienced people on set and you work really closely with different departments. So like I will have such a special and close relationship with the hair and makeup team and the costume department. And in particular on film sets, they are overlooked so much. And it is totally because it's mainly a female- Of course. Focused sort of department. You don't have a film without the glam team. I know. Forget it. I know. And also like what they're doing is artistry and it's just so often it's just sort of like push through and it's not given the time that it deserves. So I'm very conscious of that. You've mentioned wanting to flex your writing and directing muscle perhaps with a short. Have you experienced, have you started? I have started, yeah. And I, it was funny, I was trying to make it work for ages and I was like, maybe it's this, maybe it's this. And it was all, which I think is the same for a lot of people. It was very like conceptual to begin with. It's exactly what people say. I have written about what I know. It's incredibly personal. It's incredibly simple. Have to, yeah. It's not really for anybody else. I've just always wanted to do it. And I kind of, I always wanted to direct from even before I was acting. Like I'd always have my little JVC camcorder and I'd make all my mates, you know, get in and I'd come up with a scene for them and we'd redo it again and again. I used to, I'm just even looking at these dinosaurs or dragons, dinosaurs, dragons. That's a dragon. Fire breathing dinosaur. I used to do that with my dolls as well. I'd like record them in little vignettes almost. And I'm also realizing as well, what I'm drawn to within myself right now is exactly what has been there from the very beginning. Exactly. All of the aspects of me that were there when I was a kid, I've gone away from them for so long. And there's something recently that's just made me go, oh, but what was I like when I was a child? And actually that's the thing that's gonna make me happiest. Dude, I could talk about this for actually six hours of like, I am 14 year old me. Nothing has changed, truly. But even like, you know, your sort of journey to get here. Yeah. I don't know if this is the kind of thing that you were doing when you were younger, but like. Pretty much, you know what I mean? And what you were saying earlier of like, you write what you know and that's all you can do. It is so amazingly shocking every single time that when you think you're so navel gazing and so, you know, this is self-indulgence, it's all about me. How just because you are human and a human woman, that's enough for relatability. Someone will see themselves in that story. Absolutely. And that is so powerful. I mean, from what I do online, you know, it's just, what a blessing to be able to just have your own personality and share it and people love it. It's truly a blessing. Has it made you feel more confident in yourself? Yeah. Yeah, it really has because I've never felt so seen, you know, both very literally, views, but at the same time, I didn't know there were other girls like me, other people like me who, it's just, it's so, if you let it be beautiful, it is beautiful. That's so nice. How nice is that? It's so nice. Well, Lady Saoirse, present us your shield, if you don't mind, and could you read the, I forget what the words are. Oh, right. So the symbol for where you're from, just a shamrock. That'll do it. You know, plain and simple. A powerful symbol to me. So this is what I picked, again, this is like really abstract. You want a little Jackson Pollock on it? A little bit. So what I was describing earlier, don't laugh, guys. Guys, seriously. This is myself and all the girls on the outrun. Skinny dipping. Skinny dipping, which was a symbol of femininity. Yeah. And so you can't laugh at it now because I've talked about women. You're not allowed to laugh at that anymore. And then the next one is a symbol for your favorite role. So this is a quill and a piece of paper, and this is for Jo March. Oh, wow. She's my favorite still. Oh yeah, my favorite weather. I was gonna put the sun, but I just thought that's a bit basic. So I did put rain, but I put rain over a loch in Scotland. And then these are the hills, and that's supposed to be Heather. Lady Saoirse, beautiful. Thank you. You pass. Could you sign that for me? Yeah, sure. Well, Lady Saoirse, you've done amazing so far. I must say it's time to end the show. Oh no, darling, don't say that. But not before a knighting. Irish people look away. Yeah, this is sacrilege. I knight thee, Lady Saoirse, the Royal Lamb Midwife. May you be employed forever. And now a parting gift for you and yours. My cop. Your cop. My royal cop. Wow, it's beautiful. Thank you so, so much. Well, Lady Saoirse, anything you'd like to tell my realm? Well, to the realm, I would say, please, please go and watch Blitz. It is about the war. There are some tears, but ultimately it's a very joyous story of love. And my beautiful film that I made called The Outrun, you can see scenes like this with little pink ladies swimming in the ocean and lots of rain. Wow, how incredibly beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Goodbye. Bye, Saoirse. Goodbye.