The Irish actress appeared alongside Paul Mescal, Eddie Redmayne and Denzel Washington on The Graham Norton Show when the conversation turned to fears of being attacked in public.
Redmayne was discussing his new series, The Day of the Jackal, where he stars as an assassin, and described the training he did in preparation for the role, including learning how to use his mobile phone as a weapon as a form of self-defence.
Mescal interjected, joking: "If someone attacked me, I'm not gonna go, 'Phone,'”, while miming himself reaching for his phone.
“Sorry, mum, one second—bang,” he continued, miming interrupting a phone call to punch an attacker.
The men on the couch giggled, while Ronan clearly had a lot to say regarding the problematic joke. She opened her mouth a few times to say something but was spoken over, an ironic occurrence in itself regarding the experience of being a woman.
“Can you hang on a second?” Graham Norton added, while tapping his pockets looking for a phone.
Finally, Saoirse broke her silence. “That’s what girls have to think about all the time,” she said.
The remark was met with an awkward silence, but she continued.
“Am I right, ladies?” she added, following up the quip with a quick ‘shakas’ with her hands, in an attempt to break the ice with the men she’d just silenced.
saoirse ronan gagging men we love to see it pic.twitter.com/Oyu5cdlPBq
— scarlett 🍒 (@rvdlovess) October 26, 2024
While the men were unsure how to respond, the audience were quick to applaud the Irish queen for raising an incredibly important issue regarding violence against women and girls and highlighting the everyday measures that women have to take in order to protect themselves from gender-based violence.
The clip of Ronan silencing her fellow actors has gone viral online, with women worldwide praising the 30-year-old for pulling the men up on their poor behaviour, despite being the only woman on the show amongst some of the most popular male celebrities on the planet.
“Saoirse ronan gagging men we love to see it,” one user wrote, sharing the iconic clip on X.
“The way she waited to hear about their privilege, then hit them with a reality check.”
“Men have the luxury of joking about situations that women would be threatened and horrified in. Our experiences are so different!”
“I love Paul but there’s just something about men not understanding how difficult it is to exist safely as a woman.”
“That awkward silence after she dropped the bomb on them speaks volume.”
“Her ‘i think that-’ before hitting them with the ‘that’s what girls have to think about all the time’ after they finally stopped joking around, her being the only woman in the conversation hit really hard then. I love checking (even the nicest) men on shit they never consider.”
https://t.co/MmOEBiwxOC pic.twitter.com/s1o4QX2eu5
— shivani kaul (@soshivaniofher) October 26, 2024
