After years of earning her stripes as an actor, writer and co-director across dozens of indie films, Greta Gerwig made her solo directing debut with 2018’s Oscar-nominated Lady Bird, establishing herself as a fresh new voice on the contemporary female experience. Now she’s back – and going back in time – with a new adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s seminal 1868 novel Little Women, telling the story of four sisters coming of age in the aftermath of the Civil War, each with their specific own ambitions and desires. Gerwig’s film is the sixth screen adaptation, most notably following the 1994 version starring Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon and Christian Bale – bringing the beloved story to a whole new generation.
For Empire’s 2020 Preview Issue, we asked Gerwig to interview her four key cast members playing the film’s March sisters – Saoirse Ronan as Jo, Emma Watson as Meg, Florence Pugh as Amy and Eliza Scanlen as Beth – talking all things hoop skirts, piano lessons and 19th-century curse words. Here’s a sneak peek at their conversation from the magazine – on sale from Thursday 31 October – discussing what their 19th Century characters would be doing in the present day. Be warned: there's some spoiler-y info for a 150ish-year-old book in there that newcomers might want to avoid.
Greta Gerwig: What would your character be doing if she were alive today? I don’t mean, like, they’d be 200 years old, but if they’d been born in the 1990s, like all you young people. Eliza, you too! If Beth had been around nowadays she would have been cured of scarlet fever, so you’d be mixing it up with your sisters playing piano and stuff. So what do you all think? Who would the March sisters be now?
Emma Watson: I think, had Meg, the eldest, been born in 1990 (like me), she would have been very susceptible to comparing herself to the ‘Paris Hilton’-like girls and materialistic priorities of the early ’00s. I see her high-school experience as very Cady Heron in Mean Girls, ha ha, so she’d try vanity and suppressing her internal moral compass on for size, but, in the end, it wouldn’t fit her at all. Then, I think she’d go to university and probably fall in love with a boy in one of her first-year sociology or psychology classes, because she’s studying to become a social worker or a counsellor. She’d end up marrying her college sweetheart, being self-assured enough to have kids in her early twenties, and being a kick-ass working mom. To me, Meg is really a mini-Marmee. She has great emotional strength and enjoys enabling those around her to make the best decisions for themselves.
"I see Beth on keyboard for some cool indie pop band like Parcels." – Eliza Scanlen
Florence Pugh: I reckon Amy would totally be terrifying and amazing everyone in the same way she does in the book. She would still study art, ceramics even. I definitely think she would be in charge, and would feel empowered by making her own money. She’d play spin the bottle and know all the rules and how to bend them. She’d hate Monopoly because Jo would win. She’d love and tease Beth for her bad choice in shoes and would always call Meg wherever she was in the world to over-explain ‘her’ side of any story, knowing that Meg would eventually agree.
Eliza Scanlen: After completing high school and passing her final piano exams (A+ obviously), Beth would be totally mixing it up! I see Beth on keyboard for some cool indie pop band like Parcels. She’d live by the vegan philosophy and spend her free time running a dairy and egg-free cupcake stall at the weekend farmer’s market.
Saoirse Ronan: I kind of feel like Jo would have still moved to NY, as she does in the film; works for some really crappy magazines to begin with (that she hates), but then starts to make a name for herself as she begins to write for some cooler publications about her experience — she’s more open and honest in her writing perhaps than she could’ve been back in the 19th century; she then makes enough money to return to the countryside where she is truly happy and inspired. She goes for a long run every morning, very early. She probably has sex with whoever she wants (can we say that? Of course we can, why not?) and she organises really cool, intimate writers’ retreats on her farm! I just read The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, which may be influencing my answer.
Read the full interview with Gerwig posing questions to her cast in the December 2019 issue ofEmpire – on sale from Thursday 31 October. Little Women arrives in UK cinemas on Boxing Day.
