Saoirse Ronan Talks "Structure-less" Storyline of 'The Outrun' & Finding the Perfect Director | Sundance 2024 - video Dailymotion

Hollywood Journal

Saoirse Ronan and Director Nora Fingscheidt stopped by The Hollywood Reporter's studio during the Sundance film festival to chat all about their film 'The Outrun,' adapted from Amy Liptrot's bestselling memoir. Ronan talks about the "structure-less" storyline of the film and how Fingscheidt made her feel "protected" on set. Plus, Ronan dishes on celebrating her 30th birthday this year.

Transcript

00:00I'm turning 30 this year. Dirty 30! There's a lot of celebrations happening

00:05this year. I'm playing a girl called Rona in the film version of the Outrun and

00:15Rona is based on Amy Liptrot and Amy's real life and I got involved pretty

00:25early on Sarah Brocklehurst had acquired the rights to the book and myself Jack

00:34Loudon and Dominic Norris completely fell in love with the book independently of

00:38that and found that it was already sort of in very early development and we

00:44really wanted to get involved so initially it was sort of it was the

00:48whole project that was very enticing to me and and I guess you know being able

00:56to play a character that you it spans over ten years and you get to see this

01:01incredible arc and is always very attractive to an actor. The reason why we

01:11decided to produce as it were is because we wanted to help develop it we wanted to

01:16help shape it and then find the right filmmaker to come on board to to make it

01:23with us and you know for Jack in particular and for myself Scotland is his

01:31home my second home so we're always looking to bring work back to Scotland and

01:38Ireland anyway and so yeah so it just it felt very personal it felt like there was a

01:44lot of them hearts but those sort of in it for us from the very beginning and we

01:50were really lucky that Nora came on board come soon after that. So when the

01:55project came to me it was Amy's book it's a memoir by Amy Leptrod about her life

02:00and her experiences and it was clear that search who would star in the film so

02:05when I read the book I already had search in mind and that was quite an amazing

02:09experience because for for a filmmaker that's a dream coming true it also

02:14takes place at the edge of the world sort of you know in a very tiny tiny place

02:19with many islands at the north of Scotland so the combination was really very

02:23intriguing. When it came to me it was still Amy's book so we hadn't written the

02:28screenplay yet and it was very clear that to adapt something that's so internal it's

02:34almost like a collection of journal essays into a movie would be quite a challenge

02:39so it was clear the film would need to be sort of very nerdy in parts and

02:44experimental in order to keep this because it is also what makes the book so

02:48special her inner life. Yeah it's sort of it's it's non-linear as well and it's sort

02:54of weirdly sort of structure lists in terms of how we would translate that to a movie so I

03:03I think there were a lot of filmmakers that were very scared to take something

03:07like this on because if you read the book you'll see what Amy does so

03:12brilliantly is that she will see something in the present day that will

03:17remind her of something that happened to her when she was a child and then

03:22you'll sort of go into that memory for a few pages and then you'll come out of it

03:25again and suddenly you're someplace else. So to take something like that on and

03:31sort of recalibrated almost for film form is is a real challenge and we kind of

03:39didn't know where to start either and but we did know that the life of this

03:44person and the environment that she ends up in which is the Orkney Islands was

03:50going to be incredibly cinematic and so we knew that there was a movie in there but

03:57trying to sort of reshape that for for the screen was was really difficult. I knew

04:03about it through Jack. Jack had been up there with a friend a few years before

04:07and he he's a massive history buff and so him and his friend Andy were really

04:14obsessed with this Arctic explorer called John Ray who was this incredible man who

04:19came from the Orkney Islands and so they had gone up there kind of around the time

04:24that we were doing Mary Queen of Scots they had gone up there and he would show me you

04:29know beautiful photographs of the scenery and it like it rained the whole time and

04:34you could hardly see anything and it was windy and but the one thing he said is that

04:37everyone was so incredible and sort of the Orkney Islands they wouldn't even call

04:42themselves Scottish they're Arcadian first and foremost and you'd find that with

04:47people from the Shetland Islands as well it's almost more Nordic and in terms of

04:52their culture and their their accent is very different and the slang words that

04:58they use are sort of very individual and so it is Scottish but it's also sort of not

05:04so yeah that was my introduction to it and the first time I went up there was

05:09when we were delivering lamps in April May yeah there was definitely an energy on this that was

05:18incredibly calm and very it felt very very safe and you know there's so many situations that

05:27Rona finds herself in and as the actor to play it were incredibly vulnerable places to put yourself in

05:35and and I think Nora set a tone for myself and the crew and that was just I don't know it was it was

05:45just calm all the time it was peaceful it was we felt very protected and you know this was an

05:52environment that we were all putting ourselves into where we were all sort of having to face

05:56and probably very difficult memories and events that we've personally gone through ourselves so it

06:02needed to be a real sort of safe environment I think having that female energy really did

06:08help the whole process really I have to figure out sort of what does the actor need because some

06:16people need a lot of space and others need a lot of conversation everybody's different so my job is

06:21finding out what does my you know partner opposite me need exactly and then I can do my job where do you

06:31want to see yourself this year I'm turning 30 this year everyone's like I don't know when I turn 30

06:37everything changed and I just sort of like settled into who I am in my life and then a year later you

06:45see them and I'm sort of like is that true um so I yeah I don't know there seems to be a lot of

06:53expectation when it comes to turning 30 but I don't really think about it I've never been a big

06:59it's not that I'm not a big birthday person but I'm just sort of like yeah I'm 30 now I'm gonna be on set

07:05you

07:06you

07:07you

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Saoirse Ronan Talks "Structure-less" Storyline of 'The Outrun' & Finding the Perfect Director | Sundance 2024

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