Bonus Episode - The Art of Learning with Saoirse Ronan and Greta Gerwig

Acting, directing, cooking. In this candid conversation, Saoirse, Greta and Ruthie explore their personal approaches to learning, and mastering their own confidence.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've always felt very confident.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
In what I do for a living.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
But the battle.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
For me, or the challenge, has been opening myself up
to other things that I don't know about and being
okay with doing it badly.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
After doing something one.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Thing for so long since I was a kid, and
you know, when you're a kid, if you're like even
just halfway decent, everyone's like, oh my god, she's the
greatest thing I've ever seen, because you don't.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Get many kids do anyway. I do well, but like
I think then when I was older, it meant that
whenever I would try other things and I wouldn't do
it well straight away, I found that like crippling.

Speaker 5 (00:48):
I think of you as a learner, as a person
who likes to learn things. Yeah, I think of you.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
As a person.

Speaker 5 (00:54):
If someone's like I'm going to teach you how to
do this, you're like, okay, yeah, Like you'll remember when
everybody and how to knit, and then you guys were
all knitting like mad, and I.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
Was like, I'm going to do that too, because she
said Merril did it as well.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
So I wanted to be in the club.

Speaker 5 (01:09):
But it was but I have to actively if somebody
is going to teach me a new skill, I have
to be like, just let your mind learn the thing,
stop fighting it. And I feel like you're so eager.

Speaker 6 (01:21):
It depends, though, because I think in general you see
me in an environment where I'm like so open to
everything being new, But actually in my normal life, I'm
a lot like you. And I think I've really struggled
with appearing to not know how to do something that's

(01:42):
taken me a really long time to feel comfortable with.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I can't go the dentist. That's a skill i'd like,
but my fear is going to you know, I really
wanted to learn how to speak properly in public, or
get up and make a toast, or go into a
room of two hundred people you don't know.

Speaker 5 (02:03):
I've actually felt like my two superpowers have been like
my ability to say I don't know, and my own
sense of like, and I mean this genuinely, like mediocrity,
meaning not mediocrity like I'm terrible, Like it's middling and
you can work harder to get it better. But like

(02:26):
I don't feel like I have like a Bobby fish
er chest thing or you know, I don't feel like
there's like some area of like total mastery for me.
But I don't I say that I'm proud of the
work I've done. Yeah, but I don't feel like it
was like she just came out seeing shots like I
feel like I've taught myself.

Speaker 6 (02:46):
Oh wait, hold on, you mean in terms of what
you do?

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, yeah, well I taught you mean to general.

Speaker 5 (02:53):
No, but I do. No, no, no, I don't.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
But I get it with older I get it with
other things. And I think there's a real power to
that to be in like, actually, maybe I'm never going
to be great.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
At this, but that is well, not true.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
That's what you do.

Speaker 5 (03:09):
I was gonna say though about recipes. One of the
things are cooking, and I'm like out of the habit
right now because I'm just in the habit of going
to this restaurant.

Speaker 6 (03:18):
But but if you in the way you ordered that,
you're like.

Speaker 5 (03:21):
It just gives me some vegetables that I like. But
but I do feel like one of the things that
when I'm in the habit of cooking a lot, one
of the things that's really satisfying about using recipes is
if you make something two or three times, it's like

(03:41):
something you have inside you like it belongs to you then,
and that feels as satisfying to me as you've you've
been in plays, and that feeling of like when you
have a whole play inside you and you're like, I
have two hours of material inside, like to feel like
you have like the ability to make something and it's

(04:03):
just you can, it's just there, and like that feels
like and when you're cooking a lot that you feel
like there's like you have kind of a broader range
of like what's inside you. That feels effortless and it's
very satisfying.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
And the good thing about studying recipes for a certain
amount of time when you begin cooking is that it
does give you an understanding of ingredients and what naturally compliments.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Another thing, you know, it's the confidence that I always love.
You do follow a recipe, you know, it's good. You
don't have failure, you know, And I think failure is
the cruel, the really crulst when you're because it's a performance,
you know, and the recipe takes you through step by step.
A good recipe will take you here you are, and
you know it goes from one extreme where they tell

(04:53):
you the size of the tin by inches or by
you know, centimeters and a quarter of a third of
a teaspoon and all that, or I like that too,
Or a recipe can be just to inspire you to
do something, which I like the structure of a really
good recipe and then you can take it take it away.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah. I think that I subconsciously knew that if I
stick to this discipline for a few years, I'll gain
my confidence enough to be able to then kind of
like explore what I want to do with cooking. But
it's taken me a really long time. And I would
say that I'm the same with acting as well that
I was. I am very very specific and very precise,

(05:35):
but it's been I would say since Little Women that
I felt confident enough to then go, Okay, I'm going
to like mess this up a little bit, and I'm
going to break it open and see what's there and
not be afraid of it being a little messier than
I would usually allow myself to let it be