‘Little Women’ cast members Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, Eliza Scanlen and writer/director Greta Gerwig sit down with CinemaBlend’s Hannah Saulic to talk about why Gerwig changed Jo March’s ending for her movie, Little Women book moments they wish made it into the film, working with Meryl Streep and more.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:01 - This is Meg, Amy, Beth, and Joe.
00:04 - My girls have a way of getting into mischief.
00:07 - Ow, Joe!
00:07 - I'm working on a novel.
00:11 - Make it spicy.
00:12 And if the main character is a girl,
00:14 make sure she's married by the end.
00:16 - Excuse me?
00:16 - Congratulations on this movie.
00:19 My God, it's amazing.
00:20 - Thank you.
00:21 - Like seriously, I love Little Women
00:23 like every other millennial girl that grew up with it.
00:25 So I trust you obviously, 'cause Lady Bird is fantastic.
00:28 But you're always just like,
00:29 please don't ruin the thing that I love.
00:30 - Now you'll travel with me to any country.
00:32 (laughing)
00:34 - But one of the things that I was really loved
00:36 and I was so happy that you addressed
00:38 was obviously Joe's ending.
00:40 - Yes, yes.
00:41 - That's the biggest thing in my mind
00:42 where it's just like you watched the old movies,
00:43 you read the book, you're like,
00:44 she just spends the literal entire time
00:47 saying she doesn't wanna get married
00:48 and she gets married. - Yes.
00:49 - So I'm kind of curious about your decision
00:51 to not play it straight and do this like meta version of it.
00:55 - Well, like you, I had this feeling of it
01:00 when in the book Joe says,
01:02 "And then Joe stopped up her ink stand,
01:05 "didn't write again."
01:06 I'm like, what?
01:08 It got married and opened the school and had babies.
01:11 I was like, no, no, I'm pretending that didn't happen.
01:15 And then as I was an adult and I wanted to make this movie
01:20 and I discovered that Louisa May Alcott never got married
01:22 and she never had kids
01:24 and that she never wanted Joe to get married and have kids.
01:27 She wanted Joe to be, as she said,
01:29 a literary spinster with books for children.
01:31 And I thought, well, maybe there's a way to do that now.
01:36 If she couldn't do it then
01:39 or she felt like she couldn't do it then,
01:40 maybe we could do it now.
01:41 And it's finding that distance between life and fiction
01:46 that I find intellectually exciting and also very emotional.
01:54 - If you decide to end your delightful book
01:56 with your heroin spinster, no one will buy it.
02:00 It won't be worth printing.
02:01 - I suppose marriage has always been
02:04 an economic proposition, even in fiction.
02:06 - Just end it that way, will you?
02:07 - Saoirse and Laura, I'm curious to get your guys' opinion
02:11 on Greta's new ending for Joe
02:13 because obvious reasons you play Joe,
02:15 but I think that Marmee is very much Joe grown up in a way.
02:18 - Yeah, I was so excited by it.
02:20 I love when filmmakers do that anyway.
02:22 I love when it's sort of like,
02:23 hold on a minute, what's happening?
02:24 What I really love about it from an audience's perspective
02:29 is that she's acknowledging that we're there.
02:32 She's acknowledging that we're watching what's happening
02:35 and we know what the real life story is.
02:37 And this was our opportunity and Greta's opportunity
02:41 to give Louisa the ending that she probably
02:44 would have wanted and that she wouldn't have changed
02:47 if it was 2019.
02:49 So it was very, very exciting to get to do that.
02:52 And also watching someone fight for themselves.
02:57 I never knew the narrative of her keeping her copyright
03:02 and the idea of why this is the classic American novel
03:07 written by a woman, why she was the one writer
03:10 who had this staying power is 'cause she fought for herself
03:14 and not in some disingenuous, ambitious way.
03:18 She was trying to feed her family
03:21 and that's what's so incredible.
03:22 To see Greta's longing to make ambition
03:27 this gorgeous right and in Amy's character too,
03:32 to allow ambition to be fiery and gorgeous
03:36 and not like, oh, mm-mm, the thing we've seen
03:39 in a lot of films with female characters
03:41 'cause ambition in male characters is always honored.
03:46 So that's very cool.
03:47 - I intend to make my own way in the world.
03:49 - No one makes their own way.
03:51 Least of all a woman.
03:52 You'll need to marry well.
03:54 - You are not married, Aunt March.
03:55 - Well, that's because I'm rich.
03:57 - Meryl Streep to me was the perfect Aunt March.
03:59 I mean, my God, every time she was on screen,
04:01 I was curious what it was like working with her
04:03 and filming scenes.
04:04 Was she kind of staying in that Aunt March mode
04:07 in between takes? - Kind of, yeah.
04:08 She's very powerful though, being in a room with her.
04:11 Anything she gives to you in a scene,
04:12 you instantly feel like you're safe and you're saved
04:16 and that's really amazing
04:18 when you work with someone
04:19 and you feel like you're sharing that moment with them.
04:23 And I've been in love with her since I was tiny,
04:26 so I met her then.
04:27 - I also like, sorry.
04:29 - No, no, no, no.
04:30 - I was just gonna say,
04:30 I also like how she is when she's on set.
04:34 She's just, you know, obviously she's like Meryl
04:37 and she's a legend, but when she comes on set,
04:39 she's an actor and she doesn't sort of draw attention
04:42 to herself by any means.
04:43 She's quite a quiet woman and, you know,
04:46 the one scene that I had with her
04:48 we blocked it and we rehearsed it
04:51 and then the camera department were gonna come in
04:54 and set it up and light it and everything
04:55 and Meryl just stayed there
04:57 and she didn't get in anyone's way
04:58 and she didn't want to make it about her,
05:00 but she just wanted to be on set
05:02 and what I think is always lovely
05:05 when you work with someone who everyone looks up to so much
05:09 is when you're with them and they just wanna act
05:12 and they wanna work with you, that is the best thing.
05:14 - She elevated everyone.
05:16 - Yeah, absolutely.
05:17 - There's definitely sometimes an expectation
05:19 for actors to be like, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
05:23 - Or like I'm a star, but she's not at all.
05:25 - Yeah, she's totally--
05:27 - A worker.
05:28 - Yeah, she's a worker and it's a craft.
05:30 - Thank you, Aunt March.
05:32 - Oh, oh, why?
05:32 - Where'd you get the money?
05:35 - I only sold what was my own.
05:37 - You're one beauty.
05:39 - Were there any moments from the book
05:40 that you wanted to include
05:41 but didn't end up in the final cut?
05:43 - Like a million things
05:44 and I could quote them all to you right now.
05:45 There's a million lines that I loved
05:47 that I didn't have space for somehow.
05:49 There's like a line that I kept trying to give to Amy
05:52 but I just didn't have the space
05:53 because Amy, who's a total unsung character,
05:56 has so many amazing lines in the book
05:58 and one of them is, "The world is hard on ambitious girls,"
06:03 which I was like, that's true still,
06:05 and "I don't pretend to be wise, but I am observant."
06:09 And I was like, oh my God.
06:10 But there's amazing scenes.
06:12 I mean, the development of the relationship
06:14 between Lori and Amy was really fun
06:17 and a lot from the book that I just thought
06:19 they were talking about whether or not
06:20 they were great artists,
06:22 whether or not they were gonna keep pursuing
06:24 what they were working on.
06:25 They were talking about essentially
06:28 mutually deciding to grow up, which is a very,
06:32 it's both like something gained, something lost.
06:34 And I mean, there's like a million things.
06:35 I love the book.
06:37 I could have made a whole different movie
06:39 with different scenes.
06:40 There's also this great scene
06:42 where Jo tries to cook to show that she's good
06:46 at housekeeping and stuff and she uses salt
06:48 instead of sugar and then invites everyone over
06:50 and the food's disgusting.
06:53 That's fun.
06:54 That would have been really fun to see,
06:55 especially with Lori trying to pretend like,
06:57 oh no, Jo, it's fine.
06:58 - Or genuinely understanding it to be excellent.
07:01 - Also, there was an entire subplot with Lori's like,
07:03 he buys so many neckties
07:07 and it's like his necktie collection's way too big
07:11 and Jo's like, stop buying neckties.
07:13 And he's like, but I love them.
07:14 - I couldn't help it.
07:15 - Anyway, lots of stuff like that.
07:17 - Have you ever considered casting yourself
07:20 in something that you write and direct?
07:21 - I have acted in things that I've written,
07:24 but I have no interest in acting in things I'm directing.
07:28 - Why?
07:29 - I think my brain would fracture into a million pieces.
07:32 I think it's really hard.
07:34 I love directing because I love watching actors
07:37 do what they do and I love seeing it all
07:41 and it would, A, deprive myself of that privilege
07:44 and B, I think I would go, I would not,
07:48 I would, you know, there's a reason
07:51 Orson Welles became obese.
07:53 You'd go crazy.
07:55 You'd go crazy.
07:56 - Oh no.
07:57 - It's true.
07:58 - Or is it pour ma sanguine from,
08:01 no, I haven't seen that commercial.
08:02 - No.
08:03 - Ah, the French champagne.
08:08 - It's like doing a commercial in his late 50s or 60s.
08:10 - California wine. - Oh no, I haven't.
08:11 - For California champagne, you know what I'm talking about?
08:13 - I recommend it.
08:14 - I just do think it's a lot on the brain.
08:16 I'm amazed at people who can do it.
08:17 I was just talking to Olivia Wilde the other day.
08:20 And she's gonna direct herself in her next picture,
08:23 which I was like, oh my God,
08:24 you've crossed into territory I will never do.
08:28 But maybe if I wrote something,
08:32 then I could get Noah to direct it
08:33 and then I could act with Timothy.
08:35 - What?
08:37 - I could play your old friend.
08:39 (laughing)
08:41 - You know what, I'm gonna, I'll be back.
08:43 - Women, they have minds and they have souls
08:47 as well as just hearts.
08:49 - I want to be great or nothing.
08:52 - And they've got ambition and they've got talent
08:54 as well as just beauty.
08:55 I'm so sick of people saying that love
08:59 is just all a woman is fit for.
09:00 I'm so sick of it.
09:07 - So who does she marry?
09:09 - Florence, I have one quick question
09:14 that I want to slip in
09:15 is 'cause we have a lot of Marvel fans on our site.
09:17 So obviously going from something like little women,
09:20 which you're not really like fighting people,
09:21 not doing a ton of action to Black Widow.
09:24 Did you pick that because you just wanted
09:26 something totally different
09:26 or are there similarities between Amy and Yelena,
09:30 for example?
09:31 - Oh, I don't know if there, there is some,
09:32 I mean, they're both stubborn women.
09:34 And no, I think I love the script
09:37 and I love Kate Shortland.
09:39 And I think everything that they're trying to do
09:41 with that film is make it as painful and as real
09:44 and as gritty as possible.
09:47 And it was exactly like that when we made it.
09:50 And that was a really nice thing to walk into.
09:53 And of course I got to be with the Black Widow
09:56 and watch her work, which was pretty amazing
09:59 considering she's been the only female superhero
10:01 for the past 10 years.