A
AS RONAN AND CHALAMET EMERGE FROM THEIR
photo-studio dressing area in impossibly chic
new ensembles—she donning a form-fitting
knit sweater, he a silky, ruffled top—their
creative energy fills the space. They try out
different poses, debating concepts and ideas
with each other on the fly; at one point he
wraps his arms around her waist, and she quips
to no one in particular, “We’re expecting our
first.” Camera snap.
They’re modeling a new brand of movie star-
dom—pursuing projects with a point of view,
was 11, and later read the book,
feeling an immediate kinship with
the young woman she’d come to
portray. “When Louisa describes
Jo, it felt like someone describing
me physically: sort of gangly and
stubborn and very straightfor-
ward, and went for what she
wanted.” At an event for Lady Bird,
she—in a very Jo kind of way—just
“went at it” by approaching Ger-
wig. “I said, ‘So I want to be in Little
Women, but only if I’m playing
Jo.’ ” (Chalamet, for his part, was
asked by Gerwig, “Hey, want to do
another movie?” He responded:
“Yes. Yes, please.”)
Over months of living in Con-
cord with her castmates, Ronan
discovered new depths within her-
self: “Jo’s ethos is ‘Everything
everyone else is doing, I’m going to
do the opposite.’ [I had] to try
things that I’d never tried before.
Be a bit messier with a perfor-
mance.” Gerwig set up etiquette
lessons for the cast; whatever the
instructor said (“Don’t shake
hands! Don’t gesticulate with your
arms!”), Ronan made sure to ignore
it. She speaks now of this as freeing,
even transformative. “I felt like I
had tapped into something I’d
never gotten the opportunity to tap
into before, or I just didn’t have the
guts to tap into myself,” she says.
“Finding that was just amazing.”
Shortly after wrapping Little
Women, she filmed Wes Anderson’s
next film, The French Dispatch—
marking her third time costarring
with Chalamet, who plays a central
role. As for now? Ronan is taking a
little break. “I’ll wait for the right
thing to come along,” she says. “It’s
lovely to be in a position at this
moment where I can wait for the
absolute right thing.” Same goes for
Chalamet—he shot Netflix’s The
King (out Oct. 11) right before Little
Women and just completed produc-
tion on Denis Villeneuve’s Dune
adaptation. “It’s the first time in
almost two years I’ve gotten a
breath, so I’m savoring it.”adamantly being themselves in the
public eye, subverting gender
norms. Their androgynous fashion
performance here reflects their
wardrobe shake-ups in Little
Women: Gerwig and Oscar-win-
ning costumer Jacqueline Durran
(Anna Karenina) had the two
actors swapping clothes through-
out filming, to reinforce the
masculine-feminine fluidity
between Jo and Laurie. “They are
two halves,” as Pascal puts it.
“These are really bold characters
that are really different than you’ve
seen them before.”
And just as Gerwig expressed a
need to direct Little Women, Ronan
knew in her bones she needed to
play Jo. She’d first encountered the
story via the 1994 film when she