The ‘I, Tonya’ scene that confirmed Margot Robbie as an acting heavyweight
Now firmly established as an A-lister and power player on both sides of the camera as an actor and producer, the biggest challenge facing Margot Robbie a decade ago when she burst onto the scene as Hollywood’s hot new thing was to prove to the world she wasn’t going to be a flash in the pan.
As far as star-making roles go, shining opposite Leonardo DiCaprio under the direction of Martin Scorsese in The Wolf of Wall Street was one hell of a way for Robbie to put herself onto the map. What came next was equally important, though, especially when it was her biggest test by far.
Her stardom was already secured after she followed up her scene-stealing turn as Naomi Lapaglia by generating sparks with Will Smith in the fleet-footed crime caper Focus, playing a damsel in distress for David Yates in The Legend of Tarzan, making a soapy cameo as herself in ‘Best Picture’ nominee The Big Short, and serving as the principal eye candy in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad.
Those four films alone cleared $1.4 billion at the box office, so her star power was never in doubt. Her dramatic credentials were, to a certain extent, with I, Tonya, coming along at the perfect time. Not only was it her first major leading role in a mainstream, wide-releasing American drama, but it was the first feature Robbie had produced through her LuckyChap Entertainment banner. If the movie failed, or her performance wasn’t up to scratch, the blame would fall squarely on her shoulders.
Subject Tony Harding’s story was ripe for the biopic treatment, too, with the figure skater becoming a national hero in the early 1990s. Several years later, she ended up as public enemy number one when her ex-husband conspired to injure rival and fellow Olympic hopeful Nancy Kerrigan. She may not have been directly involved, but her knowledge made her complicit, and there was the small matter of the 1994 Winter Olympics looming on the horizon.
Robbie trained for four months to master the ice skating sequences and even suffered a herniated disc in her neck as a result, so her commitment and dedication were never in doubt. That being said, if she didn’t pitch her performance perfectly, then Harding could have easily come across as a pantomime villain, a caricature, or an impression that saw the lead pretending to be somebody else without actually embodying them.
Harding did a terrible thing, and she tried her hardest to grin and bear it even when she knew the world was against her, all of which was tied to the lingering childhood trauma of a mother who pushed her into ice skating. Being the protagonist and antagonist of I, Tonya at once required a performance that was every bit as complex as it was nuanced, without ever emerging from the grey areas that Harding firmly believed she was occupying at all times, both personally and professionally.
Robbie aced the assignment, earning an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actress’. Plenty of stars – rising and established alike – have been shortlisted for Oscars and then never gone on to reach those heights again, but one scene in particular underlined that the star was here to stay, and it wasn’t even supposed to be in the film.
It was unplanned and not even in the script, but one day, director of photography Nicolas Karakatsanis asked her to look directly into the camera while applying her makeup, leading to I, Tonya‘s standout moment. In that minute of footage alone, Robbie runs through the entire emotional spectrum from delirium to despair, telling audiences everything they ever wanted to know about the character without uttering a single word.
The fact it was improvised on the spot made it even more remarkable, with Robbie able to plumb those emotional depths at a moment’s notice, reiterating that she was a genuine heavyweight, and she was here to stay.
