‘Hit the nail on the head’: Paul Mescal praises Saoirse Ronan for starting conversation about female safety

A clip of Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, and some other big entertainment names went viral recently. One comment made at just the right moment opened up a big conversation about female safety, and now Mescal has opened up about the impact this had on him.

Ronan was on The Graham Norton Show recently alongside Mescal, Denzel Washington and Eddie Redmayne— she was the only woman there. The conversation turned to self-defense, as Redmayne was studying defense techniques for his role in Day of the Jackal. He mentioned being taught to slam his phone into an attacker’s face, at which point Mescal joked, “Who is actually going to think about that? If someone actually attacked me, I’m not going to go ‘phone!'” All the men laughed, clearly having fun, and then Ronan suddenly spoke up with, “That’s what girls have to think about all the time.”

It was an incredible moment. All the men instantly fell silent or looked awkward. Ronan then said, “Am I right, ladies?” and got a round of applause.

That round of applause metaphorically followed her around as the clip went viral. People joked about the actress “gagging men”, but underneath that there was a real sense of anger that women have to constantly think about street safety and men do not. Mescal, luckily, seems to understand this. During an appearance on Patrick Kielty’s The Late Late Show in order to promote Gladiator II, he said he was glad the moment took off.

“I’m not surprised that the message received as much attention that it got because it’s a massively important [one],” he said. X, formerly known as Twitter, had gone ablaze with people praising Ronan once they saw the clip.

“[Ronan is] quite often—more often than not—the most intelligent person in the room, and I think she was spot-on, hit the nail on the head. And it’s also good that messages like that are gaining traction. That’s the sort of conversation we should be having on a daily basis.” Mescal said. While the moment definitely showed Mescal up as not thinking about his male privilege, he seems to have learned from the experience. He and Ronan are actually by all accounts friends, and there’s nothing out there to say they’re not anymore. All woman know the feeling of having to gently correct a male friend, right? But of course, very few of us do it in front of such a huge audience. Ronan said of her viral moment that it was “opening a conversation”. Men like Mescal are going to need to be part of that conversation too.