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Lady Bird's Beanie Feldstein on her great audition and 'relentless weeps' after watching the movie

The actress gives EW a (lady)bird's-eye view of the Oscar-nominated movie

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Published on January 26, 2018 04:28PM EST

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EW has all the Lady Bird scoop this week with our cover story featuring Oscar nominees Greta Gerwig, Saoirse Ronan, and Laurie Metcalf, on stands now. We caught up with another member of the cast, Beanie Feldstein, on EW: The Show, where she gave us all the details on filming and why she connected to her character Julie, Lady Bird’s best friend.

Feldstein says she was so excited to receive the script because she was already a huge fan of Greta Gerwig’s and that the audition was one of the best of her life. “I only auditioned once,” she explains. “I went in and I read with Greta — she read Lady Bird’s lines and I read Julie, and it was such a wonderful audition. It’s the only audition in my life that I’ve left and felt great about, which I think says something about Greta and who she is and how comfortable she makes actors feel.”

The young actress, who also earned praise for her turn in Broadway’s Hello, Dolly!, says it was easy for her to connect with the material and the character, despite some differences. “I’m very Jewish, so the all-Catholic school was such a different world for me. And Julie also finds theater very late in her high school career, where as I was completely a theater kid,” she says. “But as far as the friendship between Lady Bird and Julie, that felt so true to me and my friends in high school, just that love between two girls and the pain of leaving each other when you go to separate schools for college.”

Feldstein loved making the film, which shot in Los Angeles and on location in Sacramento, Calif., because she bonded so strongly with costar Saoirse Ronan. For her, the greatest challenge was filming her character’s most emotional scene near the end of the film. “I really felt like I owed it to Julie to get it right because it’s such an important part of her story in the film, and I was just nervous because I had never been asked to be vulnerable and emotional like that before,” she says.

Audiences have been moved by the humor and pathos of Lady Bird, and as a cast member, Feldstein says she was no exception. “I was so moved the first time I saw this movie. I cried for 45 minutes after I left, a full 45 minutes, like relentless weeps,” she admits.

Watch the video above for more from Feldstein and get more Lady Bird in our latest issue, available here.