Saoirse Ronan has done it again.
After her recent viral moment on BBC's The Graham Norton Show, where Ronan silenced an all-male panel including Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington and Eddie Redmayne, she's spoken publicly about the awkward exchange — and has once again shared some pearls of wisdom about the female experience.
If you've been living under a rock and somehow missed the original interaction, it occurred during a conversation about how to respond when being attacked, as the men on the couch joked about using a phone as a means of escape.
"Who is actually going to think about that? If someone actually attacked me, I'm not going to go 'Phone'," Mescal laughed. The couch erupted in laughter.
Ronan's response was short, sweet, and made on behalf of women everywhere.
Watch Saoirse Ronan shutdown the conversation on The Graham Norton Show. Article continues after video.
"That's what girls have to think about all the time," she said.
Then there was silence. And the internet could not get enough of it, applauding Ronan for making a statement.
But, as it turns out, the exchange on The Graham Norton Show was not the most shocking revelation of all.
Speaking to Ryan Tubridy on Virgin Radio UK about the viral clip, Ronan expressed her surprise in regards to the attention the moment got, but was grateful that it opened up a much-needed conversation between men and women.
"The reaction has been wild. It's definitely not something that I had expected, and I didn't necessarily set out to sort of make a splash," she said.
"But 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."
She then went on to recount an anecdote that she had recently experienced as a result of the interaction. And while it's not necessarily surprising, it certainly had us thinking about how differently men and women experience the world.
"I met a woman last night who's working on Blitz, and she said that, 'You know, it's really interesting. After we watched that interview, myself and a few of my female friends were with my husband and we said, you know, this really reminds me of the fake phone call,'" she recalled.
Ronan was, of course, referring to the collective — and very much unspoken — way that women will often pretend to be on the phone in the hopes of avoiding a dangerous situation.
She continued, "And her husband went, 'What, fake phone call? What do you mean?' And of course, you wouldn't understand if you've not had to go through anything like that. But she somehow, throughout her life as a female, has gained these tools without ever talking to other women about it and understanding that this is sort of a survival tactic."
"And we've all sort of subconsciously found the same tools and use them again and again, and I find that really interesting."
The concept that a safety tactic that is so ingrained in women all around the world would be completely unknown to men is baffling, and serves as a reminder that these conversations need to be taking place more frequently.
However, Ronan also assured us that she and Mescal are pals, and that the conversation that took place on The Graham Norton Show was very commonplace in her life.
"Paul being one of my very dear friends, I've had conversations like that with him before and he completely gets that and completely understands that," she said.
But for Ronan, the fact that they had been able to have that conversation "on a show like Graham Norton" that "people tune into" across the United Kingdom and the globe, was a positive.
"It seems to have had an accessibility which seems to have really gained traction, which I think is amazing," she 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.'"
Feature image: Getty.
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