Saoirse Ronan has said the reaction to her comment about women’s safety on The Graham Norton Show has been unexpected and “wild”.

The Irish actor appeared on the BBC chatshow alongside the actors Paul Mescal, Eddie Redmayne and Denzel Washington last Friday. During the episode, Redmayne told the host, Norton, how preparation for appearing in The Day of the Jackal involved being trained in self-defence, including how to use a phone as a weapon.

Mescal questioned how someone would have time to take their phone out while being attacked, to the amusement of Norton and Washington, before Ronan said: “That’s what girls have to think about all the time. Am I right ladies?”

Her comment prompted applause from the studio audience, while a clip of the exchange went viral on social media, gaining support from women around the world.

Ronan told Virgin Radio UK’s Ryan Tubridy on Wednesday that the response was “definitely not something that I had expected, and I didn’t necessarily set out to sort of make a splash”.

She said: “I think there’s something really telling about the society that we’re in right now and about how open women want to be with the men in their lives.”

Ronan added that the conversation “felt very similar to when I am at dinner with a bunch of my friends and I will always make the point that, well, this is actually an experience that we go through every single day, 100%”.

She told Tubridy it was “amazing” that this moment was “opening a conversation” and “allowing more women to just be like, well, yeah, actually, let’s talk about our experience”.

Ronan appeared on the chatshow to talk about her new film Blitz in which she plays Rita, a mother searching for her son as the second world war engulfs London.