As a woman of advancing years I very much treasure my beauty sleep and as such I only caught up on Friday’s Graham Norton, on the iPlayer today. I have a love / hate relationship with the format of the show. When the guests have chemistry it really works and when they don’t it really doesn’t.
On Friday the camaraderie and chemistry was excellent. Hollywood stars Eddie Redmayne, Paul Mescal, Denzel Washington and Saoirse Ronan made Grahams’s job very easy, that was until Saoirse undid their comfortable ease with just one sentence, cue awkward silence and Graham swiftly changing the subject; she had the audacity to bring the real threat of violence against women into the mix.
A clip of Saoirse Ronan on the Graham Norton Show with Denzel Washington, Paul Mescal & Eddie Redmayne is going viral. pic.twitter.com/3AGzCLDn88
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 26, 2024
Earlier in the show, Graham had already irked me, and I think perhaps Saoirse as well, with his assertion that her new film ‘Blitz’ (the title being a clear clue that it is a war movie) was “not a war movie per se”. She rebutted his statement with an eloquent reminder that women and children’s experiences during war times do in fact qualify as war stories.
The show then moved on at a comfortable pace to a discussion around Eddie’s latest project, The Day of the Jackal. Eddie was sharing stories of the latest skills he had learned and, in particular, how to defend yourself using your mobile phone. Paul Mescal laughed at this while chiding, “Who is actually going to think about that? If someone actually attacked me, I’m not going to go ‘phone’”. And as quick as a whippet Saoirse cut in with, “That’s what girls have to think about all the time”. The sofa fell silent as Saoirse spoke straight out to the audience, “Am I right ladies?” which elicited a confirmation round of applause from the audience.
The awkwardness was palpable, the spectre of violence against women present for the briefest of moments in everyone’s consciousness, until Graham shuffled his cards awkwardly and swiftly changed the subject. It seems, there is no place on the Graham Norton show for such a brutally honest reminder.
Everybody and nobody are talking about violence against women, it’s in the air. It even managed to make it into the draft programme for government as one of several immediate priorities; “Ending Violence Against Women and Girls”. To achieve this the government has co-designed an “ambitious roadmap for generational and systemic change” stating that they, “must work together to end the epidemic of violence, abuse, and harm against women and girls”. Having two leading ladies may be the reason that woman’s safety finally made it onto the mandate.
I am both impressed and depressed by the inclusion in the draft programme for government. Impressed, that the government have recognised they have a role in addressing the clear and present threat of violence against women and children and depressed because obviously our society is failing women and girls.
Finally I just want to say ‘Thank you’ to Saoirse for her candid, casual reminder to her contemporaries of our shared reality as women, let’s all start causing these uncomfortable silences, because change only comes through discomfort.
Sarah Kirkwood is from Belfast and works as a medical secretary.
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