Whoops, I just outed Saoirse Ronan’s surprise cameo in Muppets Most Wanted… to Saoirse Ronan. You’d think she would have been aware of that, but although she shot an amusing little sequence where she ballet danced on “The Muppet Show” in Ireland, she didn’t know she’d made it into the finished film until I told her. She also psyched me out by saying she didn’t have a birthmark on her face in the shape of Mexico in her new film The Grand Budapest Hotel, and ladies and gentlemen, she’s a great actress. I really thought I was in hot water there for a second. I’m not sure how that’s going to come across in the transcribed interview below, but we’re cool. Hopefully she’ll invite me to her future Saoirse Ronan parties.
But her it is, my conversation with Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan about working with Wes Anderson on his latest movie, why it’s the only film she’s ever worked on that she wasn’t afraid would suck, what those fancy cakes tasted like, what I did wrong the one time I tried to ride a horse, her childhood fascination with Riverdance and her upcoming film How to Catch A Monster, written and directed by Ryan Gosling.
The Grand Budapest Hotel and Muppets Most Wanted are both in theaters now. See them.
CraveOnline: Is starring a Wes Anderson movie like putting a jaunty feather in your cap? Were you a fan of his before this?
Saoirse Ronan: [Laughs.] I was. I really was a huge fan of Wes’s. I had seen pretty much all of his films and it’s one of those things, I guess it’s like being in a Tarantino film or something, where when someone like that is sort of their own genre almost, and always uses the same people and has used the same crew for years. You never dare to dream that you’d be asked to be in one of those films, you know? So when I heard that he was interested in me being in this, I genuinely thought it was a joke and I didn’t quite believe that Wes would want me in his film. But it worked out and it was brilliant.
I think that the dream element of it went on from there, just getting your head around being in a Wes Anderson film and then suddenly you’re there. From the hotel that we stayed in to the food that we ate every night every night, actually being on set and being surrounded by a beautiful set that had been made, had built from scratch for us to play in, was amazing. It was really amazing, it was a kind of pinch yourself moment, I have to say.
Now that you’ve been in a Wes Anderson film are you going to poke him to be in every one from now on?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Weird, he hasn’t answered any of my ten e-mails that I’ve sent him in the last week, so I don’t know. Maybe he changed his e-mail or something like that. I’ll try to get in touch with him some other way. I’ll fly over to Paris if I have to.
No, I would, if he wanted me to be in another one of course I would, because I think the thing is, you never know how a film is going to turn out but I have to say it’s the only film I’ve ever been a part of where I could kind of tell from the [outset] and judging by the level of detail that he works in, I knew it was going to decent. You know what I mean? I knew it wasn’t going to be terrible. [Laughs.]
It would have been a massive, massive shock if it had turned out to be an absolute mess because there’s so much craft and planning put into the production of this film before it even began, how the story is going to be told and what kind of shots he’s going to do, and how long each shot will go on for, and how long the dialogue scenes should go on for… I’ve never worked with someone who’s been so meticulous about all that stuff before and managed to also bring humor to a scene, and make a scene that can make you cry at the same. He’s very, very technical and at the same time manages to have so much life in his films. I really don’t know how he does it. That was why the fear wasn’t there before the film came out as to whether it would be good or not, because he tends to take that with him for every film that he does.
I always loved his attention to detail, the way that he dresses his characters, gives them all a uniform. You have a very a particular birthmark in this movie. Did he know exactly…
What are you talking about?
Oh, excuse me.
I never noticed a birthmark.
[Whistles nonchalantly.]
You’re right, I do have a birthmark.
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