Eliza Scanlen on Little Women, the Power of Sisterhood, and Ambition
Back to Beth: Without her own sister by her side—“filming made me miss her a lot,” she says, though they FaceTimed constantly—while shooting in Boston, Scanlen fully immersed herself in the March sisterdom. She lived in the same apartment complex as Saoirse Ronan (Jo) and Florence Pugh (Amy), and Emma Watson (Meg) lived around the corner. “I actually found the apartment complex,” Scanlen says, proudly. “But Saoirse seems to think that it’s a retirement village. It’s not! I refuse to say it was a retirement village because it was a lot of fun. If anything, people were very happy to have us there.” The four became like family, with regular sleepovers and dinner parties. “We’d make wintry meals. Florence made soup, I made a curry.” Florence, she adds, is really good at making mulled wine, while Saoirse is the “queen of gin.” They’d watch Summer Heights High and took care of each other. “There were some nights when Saoirse would get home really late from filming, and I’d leave dinner on her doorstep.”
When asked which onscreen sister she was closest to, Scanlen answers like a true March—which is to say it’s impossible to pick. “I don’t think I ever had a moment alone with any particular person,” she says. “We were all inextricably linked to one another. The connection we have is incomparable.” But then again, there are some things that only flesh-and-blood sisters can get away with. “My sister was visiting for a week, and she ended up taking home a lot of my underwear. So now I need to go shopping—I don’t have enough anymore.”
Caitlin Brody is the entertainment director at Glamour.
Stylist: Thomas Carter Phillips at the Wall Group; hair: Blake Erik at Forward Artists; makeup: Gita Bass at the Wall Group.