‘Little Women’ Fans May Have Missed This Adorable Jo and Laurie Detail

Little Women author Louisa May Alcott famously refused to pair off the strong-willed Jo March and the free-spirited Theodore “Laurie” Laurence, but that didn’t stop her readers from wishing the two characters would get together. After she published Part 1 of her novel in 1868, Alcott was flooded with letters from fans demanding to know if Jo and Laurie would marry. They were Jo and Laurie “shippers” long before the word “shipping”—which is short for “relationship” and, among fans, means desiring that two characters get together romantically—ever existed. Though Alcott stood her ground, the love for Jo and Laurie has never died. And as it turns out, Little Women writer/director Greta Gerwig is something of a Jo/Laurie shipper herself.

In a nine-minute behind-the-scenes feature for the Oscar-nominated 2019 adaption of  Little Women—which is out on DVD and Blu-ray today, for $17.99 and  $19.99 respectively—Gerwig reveals that she decided to have Saoirse Ronan (Jo) and Timothée Chalamet (Laurie) swap clothes on set, to highlight the deep connection that Jo and Laurie had.

“Together, they have this quality—they’re both beautiful, and they’re both handsome,” Gerwig said in the feature called “Making a Modern Classic.” She continued, “They’re kind of androgynous creatures. Jacquelyn [Durran, Little Women‘s Oscar-winning costume designer] had them trade clothes the whole movie, so they’re always wearing each other’s clothes. The scene where Jo offhandedly gives him her ring, he’s wearing a yellow vest, which then she’s wearing when they’re on the hillside and he proposes to her. There are things like that all over the movie because I just wanted them to seem like they are one and the same.”

Here are just a few of those clothes-swapping moments in Little Women.

Laurie wears the yellow vest when he accepts a ring from Jo, and Jo wears that same vest when she turns Laurie down.

Laurie wears a brown vest when Jo reveals her new haircut, and Jo wears the same vest when Beth gets her new piano.

Laurie wears a red scarf and white shirt to the beach, and Jo wears the same outfit when she takes Beth to the sea.

Excuse me while I go cry about this.

If you’re wary of getting mail in the middle of a pandemic, you can also buy Little Women on digital, too. Both the Little Women DVD and the digital copy come with over 45 minutes of bonus features, and as an avid fan of Gerwig, Little Women, and bonus features in general, I can assure you all that these are legitimately great bonus features. These are not hastily thrown together interviews with the cast where they say generic things like “This project was so much fun,” or “I had so much fun on this project,” or “Fun, much, this project was.” No, these features include ample behind-the-scenes footage and juicy tidbits for the true nerds, and I highly recommend picking up a copy on Prime Video, iTunes, Google Play or wherever you purchase digital content for the extras alone. It will be 45 minutes well spent.

Where to watch Little Women