GROSS: So when you went to Catholic school in high school and you were not Catholic, did you feel like you were more Catholic than a lot of the Catholic kids in the school because you were actually interested in the rituals (laughter) and in the saints?
GERWIG: Yeah. Well, I think because it wasn’t my background, I was allowed to love it in a way that if maybe it had been, you would seek to reject it.
GROSS: Because it couldn’t oppress you because it had no power over you. You could just take what was beautiful from it.