FROM SATURDAY NIGHT Live to Good Morning America, Saoirse Ronan has been all over US telly this week.
She’s promoting her critically-acclaimed new film Lady Bird – a movie which has accumulated the longest run of positive reviews ever recorded by Rotten Tomatoes.
On Tuesday night, she was on Stephen Colbert’s late night chat show, and discussed everything from changing her name to the ins and outs of Irish Catholicism
A key part of Lady Bird is the fact that it’s set in a Catholic school, so Colbert asked Saoirse about her own connection to the religion:
“I was raised Catholic, yeah. It’s a much more cultural thing in Ireland – I mean there are very religious Catholics as well – I went to a Catholic school, made my first communion and confirmation and all that sort of stuff.”
Colbert had to bring up a crucial and relevant plot point:
In this movie you eat unconsecrated communion waifers as a snack.
I mean, until it’s consecrated it’s just a piece of bread?
Saoirse informed him of how that would go down in Ireland:
“There’s no way you’d be let away with that in Ireland. There’s no way. Still like, it’s against the rules, God will be looking down on you and judging you Stephen”
“That accent put a chill down my back just now. You’re like a character from a James Joyce novel”
She then, as is custom at this stage, addressed the difficulties of her name being pronounced in America – telling the story of a car waiting for her with the sign “Shelley Ronan”
That’s the kind of thing that will catch on and be read out at the Oscars in the not so distant future.
