After a stunning feature debut with 2017's God's Own Country, director Francis Lee is back on the scene with another queer romance in Neon's latest historical drama Ammonite, which tells the story of real-life paleontologist Mary Anning (Titanic and The Reader's Kate Winslet) and her love affair with London housewife turned fossil hunter Charlotte Murchison (Little Women and Lady Bird's Saoirse Ronan).
PRIDE got the chance to speak to Ammonite star and four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan about playing Charlotte, bringing romance between two queer women to the big screen, what it was like starring opposite screen legend Kate Winslet, and more!
"I've played characters in the past that have been probably bisexual, quite androgynous, and in a way sort of genderless. I've explored that a little bit before, but this was the first time where I played a character that had this sort of full-blown relationship with a woman," Saoirse told PRIDE about her first time playing an explicitly queer character in a period film, but not having the character's story focusing around their identity or coming out to those around her. "The idea of that relationship being purely centered around, say just the sexual side of their relationship, I wouldn't have felt comfortable just exploring that one part of any relationship."
She continued:
"It felt very pure and a very sort of natural progression for these women to make, but what was also very important to me was really getting to highlight the working relationship that they have together and how the romance and the love kind of comes out of that and it comes out of the love of the work. To see something like that, to see a romantic relationship like that between two people of the same gender on-screen... Yes, there are these really sexy moments as well, but they have a full, well-rounded relationship and they get on each other's nerves sometimes. Sometimes they don't know what to say to one another and I love how they just sort of settle into their roles with one another."
Ammonite is in theaters now!
