The co-star who terrified Margot Robbie: “He’s really lovely, though”
Margot Robbie proved that she was one of the greatest acting talents of her generation from the moment she sparred with Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. In the years since, she has only reinforced that status with movies like I, Tonya, Mary Queen of Scots, and Barbie. However, her recent work as a producer is rapidly overtaking her efforts as a performer.
Robbie seems to have a sixth sense when picking films to back. She’s produced everything from low-budget hits like Promising Young Woman and My Old Ass to the record-smashing Oscar-winning box office hit Barbie. She’s also producing the upcoming Sims movie, a Monopoly adaptation, and Emerald Fennell’s take on Wuthering Heights, in which she also stars.
Part of being a producer is knowing how to deal with many difficult people who have many competing interests. I’m not going to say that she acquired that enviable skill through the misfortunes of working with Jared Leto, but it probably didn’t hurt, either. The two starred together in the 2016 comic book movie Suicide Squad, with Leto playing the Joker and Robbie playing Harley Quinn. Not surprisingly, she was a bit nervous to work with him.
If you are lucky enough to be unaware of Leto’s notorious onset behaviour, I’ll try not to disturb the peace too much. Suffice it to say that his former co-stars have revealed that he ascribes to his own brand of Method acting with which many Method actors would not want to be associated. He’s had to be pushed around in a wheelchair twice on set, once for gaining weight so quickly for Chapter 27 that he got gout and struggled to walk through the pain, and another time for Morbius when he refused to break character but took such a long time going to the loo that the director finally assigned a member of the crew to ferry him around the set between takes.
Only Margot Robbie could find a way to speak truthfully about him while still giving him the benefit of the doubt. “He’s kind of terrifying,” she told Film in 2016. “He’s really lovely, though. He’s very conscientious on set. He’s not completely lost in the character that he’s violent or anything. Between every take, he asks if I’m okay.”
Before they started shooting the film, Robbie was understandably a bit worried about how the on-screen relationship between their characters might spill over off-screen. “I started to panic a bit because I’m in an abusive relationship with this guy who thinks he is the character,” she said. “I was worried I’d get beat up on set.” She didn’t, though, and claims that Leto was respectful towards her and entertaining to observe. “It is a really bizarre process and kind of fascinating,” she explained, “It’s not a process that would work for me, but I can see the way he does it, and it clearly works for him.”
At this point, she should just run for president because that level of diplomacy is a rare skill. It is also completely wasted on Leto, who does not deserve it.
