Selena Gomez Meets Saoirse Ronan to Discuss Child Stardom, ‘Sexy and Raw’ Characters and How ‘The Outrun’ Depicts Addiction
Plenty of our Actors on Actors subjects did their homework this time around — but Selena Gomez may win the prize for most prepared. As she sat down, the “Emilia Pérez” performer clutched a phone on which she had pages of questions she intended to ask Saoirse Ronan, star of “Blitz” and “The Outrun.” Both films provided Gomez material. In “The Outrun,” Ronan is at the center of the frame as a woman recovering from alcohol addiction; in “Blitz,” she plays the supporting role of a mother trying to reunite with her young son in bombed-out World War II London. Gomez herself is in the supporting actress race with Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” in which she plays a young mother who seeks answers and independence after her spouse (played by Karla Sofía Gascón) mysteriously disappears.
SELENA GOMEZ: This is my first time, everybody.
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SAOIRSE RONAN: I can tell, because you’ve got all your notes. Now I’m getting nervous: “Oh, God, I should have made notes.”
GOMEZ: No, no. If I’m to be honest, you have a much more interesting acting career than I do.
RONAN: You’ve come very prepared. Are you quite studious when it comes to your prep for work?
GOMEZ: When it’s something I really love and care about, I tend to want to immerse myself in it completely. For “Emilia Pérez,” that was an entirely different language for me. I should be fluent [in Spanish], and I was when I was younger.
RONAN: Did you do a lot of prep with a language coach, or were you just starting to speak with family again?
GOMEZ: It was really interesting. We all had to have our own coach, because Zoe Salda?a is from the Dominican Republic, Karla Sofía Gascón is from Spain, and I’m from Texas, but my family is in Mexico.
RONAN: When you told your family that you’d been cast, and that you were going to speak Spanish and immerse yourself in it, what was their reaction?
GOMEZ: They’re extremely proud. And I couldn’t be happier to honor that part of me and my culture. Singing in Spanish, too, was really beautiful, because the words are so powerful. And in Spanish, everything sounds romantic.
RONAN: Now I’m scared to know what you’re going to ask me.
GOMEZ: It’s all very good, I promise. I saw “Blitz” and “The Outrun,” and the one I connected with the most would have to be “The Outrun.”
RONAN: That means a lot. I’m incredibly proud of both films, but “The Outrun” was something that I built from the ground up with my partner. I was producing it for three years before we actually made the thing.
GOMEZ: Oh, that’s like your baby.
RONAN: The reason I wanted to do it is because, like everyone, I’ve been affected by addiction. I’ve watched loved ones suffer from alcoholism; it was this monster in the corner of the room that I hadn’t dealt with. I was finally ready to crack that open, so there was a lot of raw emotion and finding the best way to use that.
GOMEZ: My favorite moment is when you go back to the times that your character would use; it showed the journey really well. Personally, I’ve been in recovery for things in my life, and it just felt very true. It made me very emotional, but it was so beautiful. Do you have to recover from any sort of rawness that you show, or is it just quite natural and then you can come out of it?
RONAN: I can come out of it. But there are moments that will catch you off guard that you’ll feel very affected by. There’s a moment in “The Outrun” where Paapa Essiedu, who plays my boyfriend, is pouring wine down the sink, and it’s been a horrific night that I’ve just completely ruined for him. Physically and emotionally, it’s quite violent and chaotic. I don’t know if you’ve ever read “The Body Keeps the Score,” but it’s all about how you can hold on to trauma like that in your body. I’d been on the receiving end of that as well, but suddenly I was the cause of it. That was incredibly upsetting. That was one of the only times, ever, where I felt like I just needed a minute.
The reason why I love to act and I love to perform is that any of these wounds that you’ve got or emotions that you’ve got ready to go, you channel them into the performance. And if they’re all sort of coming out of you unfiltered for a two-minute take and you feel like you’ve really allowed the floodgates to open, then by the end of the day you’re knackered, but you’re sort of cleansed from it, almost. You know what I mean?
GOMEZ: That’s true.
RONAN: With “Emilia Pérez,” were there ever moments where you couldn’t shake it off?
GOMEZ: To be honest, not with this one, because I related to the lyrics — this being trapped, if you will. My character, Jessi, is trapped in her own world, and she’s had everything that she’s wanted. And then she loses her partner and rediscovers herself and wants to find love and have a new life. I found that to be very therapeutic.
How did you approach the essence of these characters? Especially in these films, with how different they are?
RONAN: It’s such a hard thing to dissect. We’ve been doing this since we were so young. And you’re developing this discipline before you’re really aware of what you’re doing, which I feel really grateful for! There was this lack of inhibition when I was introduced to the world of acting for the first time. I was so protective over Elliott [Heffernan], who’s the lead in “Blitz.”
GOMEZ: This was his first film.
RONAN: He was 9 years old when he made it. There’s just this sort of blind faith that kids have. The older you get, there’s more to carry; there’s more awareness of what can go wrong, or how much responsibility you’ve got on your shoulders.
GOMEZ: It was your first time playing a mother, no?
RONAN: Elliott reminded me it wasn’t my first time. He was like, “Remember, you played the mother to King James I and VI in ‘Mary Queen of Scots,’ Saoirse,” which, correct — I did. But this was the first time that I was actively playing a mother. I’d never done that before.
GOMEZ: How’d that feel?
RONAN: It was good. I had to figure out what my version of that was, because I’m not a mom yet, but I’m very close to my mother. I wanted to hold on to the awareness that Rita, my character in “Blitz,” is still very young. Hers is this teenage pregnancy, and she’s essentially growing up with this little boy. As much as I wanted there to be a maternal element to her character, I still wanted it to feel like they were companions and friends.
GOMEZ: That’s really special. My mom had me when she was 16. I do feel that we grew up together, and that’s a different perspective than someone who would wait until they’re older to have a child. I am so grateful that we were there for each other. It felt very “Gilmore Girls.”
RONAN: Was she with you when you were working?
GOMEZ: My mom was fantastic. She would never put me in a room by myself; she was very aware of things that I didn’t know. For example, if I had to go to a premiere and I was 16, she’d say, “You can’t go to the after-party. You can have fun, and then you’re going to go home.” Little things that helped my sanity, if you will.
I got to play a mom in “Emilia Pérez,” and it was very sweet. However, I was intimidated. There is something about children that is fearless, and I appreciate that so much, and I miss it a little.
RONAN: Whenever I’m with kids, it reminds me of how much I love what I do. But it’s also this melancholy that starts to sink in. You’re like, “Oh, I’m never going to have that again.”
GOMEZ: That’s fair. I’ve felt that many times.
You play a lot of historical characters in different eras. How do you get into those roles, and those eras?
RONAN: With anything that’s set in the past, as much as you want to expose yourself to the culture and the zeitgeist of the time, you then need to forget about it. You know what I mean? You need to become aware of it and expose yourself to it and educate yourself in it, but I’ve always wanted to play them as if you could relate to them now. The more we learn about Mary, Queen of Scots, she was a young lassie who was kind of in over her head and just wanted to hang out with her friends and had 10 dogs because she was a queen. How many singers do you know, or how many actors do you know, that are exactly the same? They’re in this bizarre world from such an early age, and they’re like, “OK, I can have whatever I want.”
GOMEZ: So dangerous.
RONAN: The gorgeous, brilliant, perfect, amazing Greta Gerwig gave you guys a joint award at the Cannes Film Festival. How was that experience? How was it to be with Greta? Just talk to me about that.
GOMEZ: I think you can tell, now that we’ve hung out, that I’m still a bit awkward. So I never like to bother people. Ariana [Grande] was in the other room, and I was like, “I’d love to go say hi, but I don’t want to bother her,” because I know how life can be. I think that can step in the way of me getting to know people, and that’s something I should work on a little bit.
RONAN: But talk about the experience of getting the award.
GOMEZ: We all got to celebrate that together, and we were all talking about where we’re going to put our award and just how proud we were to be a part of it. We just didn’t expect it.
RONAN: And where did you put the award?
GOMEZ: I actually have it above my fireplace.
RONAN: Nice. Front and center. I’m interested to know what your experience was like with Jacques.
GOMEZ: I’ve never wanted to be the center of attention, so I love working with filmmakers that make it feel collaborative. Jacques was like a little kid. He would get so excited when we’d do something right, and he would let us know — even though I couldn’t understand him half the time. I was appreciative.
RONAN: Did he speak in French the entire time?
GOMEZ: It was such a weird experience. We had translators; we had coaches; we had Jacques’ interpreter. French, English, Spanish — it was the wildest combination, but he pulled it off.
RONAN: If you don’t necessarily like to be the center of attention — when it comes to acting, do you want to take the lead yourself? If the right role came along, would you want to do that?
GOMEZ: I think so. I’m just a bit nervous. I have been acting and singing my whole life, but this is all a new experience for me. I’m really proud of the choices I’ve made, because I go for the parts that scare me a little. That’s the rush I crave.
RONAN: There’s this other persona you have as a musician, but whenever I’ve seen you in an acting role, I’ve always been impressed by how you’ve gone the other way. You haven’t gone down the route that people expected. With “Emilia Pérez,” you have that solo, and it’s so dirty and sexy and raw. She’s broken and messed up. She’s a mother and trying to do her best, but she also wants to go out and have a good time. You can see there’s a want there to show people what you’ve got.
GOMEZ: That means a lot to me. I love storytelling, and my music career is separate. However, I don’t see that being a forever thing.
RONAN: Music?
GOMEZ: I’ll always have music in my life because my partner’s a musician, and I love having moments to do it for fun. It can be a little vulnerable when you’re putting yourself out there versus escaping into a character.
You do some singing in “Blitz” — how was that?
RONAN: It is the most vulnerable feeling to get up on a stage — even if it’s a makeshift stage in a fake munitions factory — and perform for people. The idea of singing in front of people has always been really exposing. I don’t think people realize how special it is to have that extra je ne sais quoi that makes you unique and special.
GOMEZ: I definitely think my strong suit is probably acting. But one thing I’m proud of in music is being able to tell a story — my favorite songs are mostly ballads, and they’re very transparent and honest. But I think I might be a little too old for the pop-star life. I’m genuinely so happy to just be in this new era of my life, because in a lot of ways, it’s just the beginning.
Production: Emily Ullrich; Lighting Director: Max Bernetz; Set Direction: Gille Mills
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