Saoirse Ronan says her Little Women character might be queer
Saoirse Ronan (left) being interviewed with her Little Women co-stars by Out Magazine. (Screenshot)
Actress Saoirse Ronan says her character in the new film version of Little Women might be queer if the book had been written today.
Ronan, who will also play Kate Winslet’s lesbian lover in upcoming movie Ammonite, plays heroine Jo March in Great Gerwig’s new big-screen adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1968 novel ‘Little Women’.
In an interview with Out magazine, Ronan was asked: “Jo for so long has been kind of coded as queer and I’m wondering, if this story was taking place today , do you think she might identify differently, like in terms of gender or sexuality?”
“Because I think this film leaves a lot of questions,” the interviewer says.
“It does,” Ronan replies, “and I think this is the first time, in any adaptation of the book, that they’ve even in some way been addressed.”
“It wasn’t something that I was aware of in Louisa until we started to do research for the movie, and Laura in particular did so much research on like the letters that she had written to her mother and diary entries and things like that,” Ronan said.
She added: “That moment when she’s in the attic and she says, you know, I want to be able to love freely. That actually comes from Louisa’s words.
“And yeah, I think that, you know, what I did really love about her is that she didn’t sort of put a lid on it.
“It was something that she was willing to acknowledge, and I think that she was self-aware enough to know that, like, there was something different about her.
“And something that made her sort of different from even her other sisters, you know.
“And I think if she had had the language or even a term that she could use to go, oh, maybe this is how I feel or this is what I am, and that’s okay and there’s a safe space for this, then totally, I could see her definitely experimenting with her sexuality, for sure.”
Little Women is out in UK cinemas on Christmas day.
