And people, Greta, are just discovering this movie still.

You know, most of them saw it for the first time

and obviously, they kinda liked it, you could tell.

Which makes you feel great, I bet.

You know, coming out here and seeing this

kind of response that you've been getting to this film.

Which is essentially your first,

it's certainly your first solo directorial achievement.

Can you guys hear me?

Okay good.

No, this is amazing.

This is, what a surprise on a Saturday afternoon.

Yeah, it was an amazing journey.

Like, I loved making the film.

It's my first writing, directing, solo debut,

and I had such an amazing

It was such an incredible group of actors and crew

and everyone who came together to make it.

And I know everyone really poured their heart into it,

and that it's being received that way

is just, it's the most exciting thing for me.

And I think for all of us.

Yeah, it's something.

And people, I think, will come up to you often and say,

oh, so it's gotta be your story,

you're from Sacramento, you know,

you went to a Catholic school, you did all of this stuff.

But, tell them the truth.

It is your story.

The truth is, I mean I'm from Sacramento

and I had to go to Catholic high school,

and I really very much wanted to

make a movie that took place in Sacramento,

because I love it very much and it's my home.

And I have really strong ties there, my family's there,

my best friends from growing up are there.

So that's all very much grounded in what I knew,

but the character of Lady Bird was actually

something that both Saoirse and I

realized when we started working on this together,

it was not who I was when I was in high school.

I was a much more,

I never made anyone call me by a different name,

I didn't die my hair bright red,

I was a very rule-following kid.

And I think we related on that level,

and then when I wrote I was trying

to almost create a person who was

more brave than I had the ability to be,

who was more wildly herself.

And it wasn't until I saw Saoirse to do it

that I got to meet this flawed heroine that I had made up.

You know, and we have a bunch

of actors in the audience here,

and this is such a great,

all the way down the line and those that aren't here too,

great ensemble you've put together.

And you know, as an actor yourself,

what is that approach you have

in working with actors as a director?

I know you're not in the movie yourself.

Yeah, oh, well, I just, I adore actors.

I mean, I've acted a lot,

it's such a huge part of who I am as a director

because it's how I was on sets, it was my film school.

Because I didn't go to proper film school.

And I feel like, for me,

part of what's so gratifying about making movies

is trying to figure out how to

work with each individual, with what they need,

because every actor needs something else,

and kind of getting in there.

Like for me, my most treasured memories

are the scenes when they,

for some reason, like, didn't work,

and we had to kinda get in there

and figure out why and solve it together.

Because those are the moments where,

you know, you're really being asked

to bring all your creativity to the moment.

And yeah, it was extraordinary,

the group of people who said yes.

And how did you come upon

the idea of casting Saoirse in this?

How did that come to you?

Did you think of her when you were writing it, or?

No, I wasn't thinking of anyone.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry Saoirse.

I don't think of, I haven't thought of yet

actors while I was writing.

Plus it would seem pretty

presumptuous of me to think of her.

I was looking for my Lady Bird

and I was working with my casting directors

and I hadn't found her and

my producer, Scott Rudin, slipped her the script,

and she really responded to it.

And then we started skyping

and then we met up at the Toronto Film Festival.

And it was just instant, it was instantly right.

And it was so different than what I thought,

but exactly what I had wanted

and not been able to articulate.

Saoirse, for you, what about playing this?

We've seen you do so many great,

different kinds of roles,

but I haven't seen you do one quite like Lady Bird before.

Yeah, I mean I don't think anyone

Does this work?

It feels like it doesn't work.

Can you hear me?

Okay, all right.

Yeah, I mean I don't think anyone's

quite seen a character like this before.

And I think even within that world,

nobody knows anyone like Lady Bird.

I think, you know, you can see

the affection that her family and her friends

and Danny and all these different people have for her,

because she is so many things.

I think she's sort of allowing herself to be everything

in order to find out which thing fits the best.

And to have that sorta bravery, to pursue the thing

not knowing what the thing is

is a trait that I didn't

necessarily have when I was younger

and am still trying to use a little bit more now.

And so I think that was something

that I admired an awful lot in her,

just her bravery to sort of go for it

regardless of what it is.

[Moderator] Do you work with, I know Greta's

Yours sounds so much louder.

It really does.

[Moderator] Did you work with Greta

in developing the character?

I know once the script's done

and you're out shooting it, that's that.

But how did you develop it along the way?

I mean I think when it came to,

you know, the physicality, her movement, her look,

which can actually just really feed into a character anyway,

that sort of stuff we worked on together.

You know, her bedroom, how her bedroom was gonna look

and her, what was gonna hang from her schoolbag.

You know, the little sort of similarities

that her and her best friend were gonna have.

Which actually were all really really

important things to add to a character,

as an actor, I think, with the director.

So much of it was on the page already, it really was,

and we didn't really veer away,

well we didn't at all veer away from the dialogue.

It was sort of set in stone, which was great,

so we always had that to fall back on

and to build up from.

But yeah, I think, you know,

all of the progress came from

Greta and I talking to each other a lot,

spending time together in the year up to shooting,

and then all of us getting to,

you know, hang out a few months before we shot the film.

This is like a mother-daughter

love story of a different sort, definitely,

but you can relate to the two of you

in a big way, Laurie.

And you know, this is such a great character that you have

because even though she seems rough on her

you can see the love there.

Yeah, I know.

And that's to Greta's credit,

because, you know, on the page

you can instantly see the battles that we have

and the triggers and the passive-aggressive qualities

that we, that we're masters of,

but Greta, I love the little moments of heart

that are thrown here and there

that go a long way in telling their backstory

that we don't get to see

because we're only seeing them

at this one particular time within their relationship.

And you know that they're gonna

ease their way out of it.

But I adored working on the movie

and working with everybody in it,

and reading it for the first time

I was just, I couldn't wait to get started on it.

It was wonderful to go to work every day.

Tell me about that opening scene in the car,

which I understand was actually

shot towards the end of the shoot.

But it's so real to look at.

Did you really just fly out of

that car while she's driving along?

Oh yeah.

Now it's louder.

Yeah.

I do all my own stunts, drop and rolls.

Very good with the drop and rolls.

No, we had a big conversation about it beforehand.

'Cause I've done quite a few stunts before

where my life has been put in danger,

so in this case, everyone was like,

so cautious and, you know,

we were on a rig, so we did it near the end of the film,

and it was so great because Laurie and I

had rehearsed, and we had done

every other argument scene, which was really great.

No it actually was really great,

because you know, in rehearsals,

it was Laurie who said it at first, I think,

that it was really important to sort of pinpoint

what type of argument each argument was,

and how we can't sort of repeat the same one twice.

So we had gotten to know each other

as characters and as actors really well,

and then by the time we did this,

it just all sorta clicked into place.

The car was put on a rig,

and Greta was in a car in front

sort of looking at us through the windscreen,

which her walkie and her bag of Cheetos.

You're an action director all of a sudden.

She's an action director.

Paul Greengrass, what?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just as long as I have Cheetos

I can do any action scene.

Yeah, but it was, it sort of felt

like it clicked into place right away.

I loved working on that scene,

because it got to be kinda messy,

we were stepping on each other's lines.

And it was emotionally all over the map.

From weeping at the beginning

to you know, here comes all the button pressing

and hurling yourself out of the car door at the end.

Yeah, right from the very first

take of the two of them in the car,

it was like, it was just great.

And most of, you know, the two shot of the,

it's mostly that first take.

They were so locked into each other by that point,

that it felt like getting to be

an audience member to your own film

as it's being made is one of the

most pleasurable feelings I've ever had.

And what's great as well with the way that

Greta and Sam Levy, our DP, shot it

was that there's so many scenes

that are just mainly shot in a two shot.