Focus Features
BY DANIELLE RYANOCT. 13, 2024 10:45 AM EST
There are many different ways to approach acting, and sometimes it can be helpful for performers to mirror their roles in reality to really get into character. Taken to its furthest lengths, this is known as Method acting, a process that numerous actors have used to help identify with the people they portray. It can occasionally be a little unnerving when actors stay in-character after the director yells cut, especially when they’re playing creepy characters, but it can be a truly helpful tool. Sometimes just a little Method goes a long way, like in the case of Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie on the 2018 historical drama “Mary Queen of Scots.”

In the film, which our review called a “progressive but stale period drama” that was elevated by its performances and cinematography, Ronan’s Mary is the Queen of Scotland, but she’s constantly in danger because her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I (Robbie), views her as a threat to her own throne. The movie is a bitter power struggle between two women who are forced at each other’s throats because of the machinations of men, but the pair only actually have one scene together at the very end. In order to help establish that tension, Ronan and Robbie were kept on separate shooting schedules. Keeping them apart led to a powerful moment when they finally did film together, and Ronan and Robbie later told Deadline all about the “experiment” and just how well it worked.

Staying separate helped Robbie and Ronan perform

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In the interview, Ronan explained that their separate shooting schedules and only being on set together for that one scene really helped their dynamic, saying:

“It was Margot and I that both agreed from the very beginning that we didn’t want to see each other, and we thought it would be quite a fun experiment to try, because I had certainly never tried that before. Margot started before I did, and our meeting scene was the very first thing that I shot. To know in the three weeks that I had off, all of the English court stuff was being shot, and that this whole world was existing that I didn’t really know anything about was exhilarating. You were sort of guessing what they were up to, and who was in alliance with who, and it just meant that when we did finally do that meeting scene, we were acting definitely, but it was personal. It became a very, very emotionally loaded day for us.”The entire movie hinges around that one scene, and though it’s likely that the two queens never actually met in history, it’s deeply powerful in the film. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, writer and director Josie Rourke explained that the whole movie came about because she was thinking about that potential meeting, “with these two women looking at each other and being confronted with their choices.” The two women have so much on their shoulders, as family members, as rulers, and just as human beings, and it all comes to a breaking point in the film’s final moments.

The actors poured their hearts into the scene

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The actors being kept separate worked beautifully, Robbie explained to Deadline, because a big part of Elizabeth’s story is “the isolation and the loneliness.” As Elizabeth, Robbie is stone-faced and cold and frequently alone, whereas Saoirse’s Mary is surrounded by others and gets to have much lighter scenes. In a way, Robbie lived vicariously through Ronan, knowing that her filming experience was much more joyous. In the end, it worked because when the two met, Robbie was able to channel that envy into a kind of resentment for Elizabeth to have for Mary, and Ronan was able to turn her curiosity into Mary’s (well-deserved) fear of Elizabeth. That way, when the two saw one another, there were some very real uncomfortable feelings that helped supercharge their performances.

Though this was far from the first (or last) time that actors were deliberately kept apart during production, it was definitely a case where it worked out for the better. Although Ronan told Entertainment Weekly that when they finally did reunite, the two actors were “blubbering like idiots,” holding one another and sobbing, it sounds like the time apart gave them a much stronger idea of their characters. The two almost got the chance to reunite on screen for something much more fun — Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” — but unfortunately that fell through. Maybe one day the two can laugh it up together onscreen, but for now, at least we have one killer scene from “Mary Queen of Scots.”