Under the Spotlight: Margot Robbie in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’
At just 23 years old and with little more than an Aussie soap credit to her name, Margot Robbie landed a role opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Hollywood giant Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.
After improvising a slap in her audition, Robbie won the role of Naomi Lapaglia, the wife of the wolf himself. Robbie’s bold attitude was unwavering as she took her interpretation of the character from the audition room to Scorsese’s set, resulting in a bold and memorable breakout performance like no other.
Suddenly, young Robbie found herself working alongside some of the biggest names in the business on her first American feature film. Not one to shy away from the challenge, Robbie delivered an unrelenting performance, enhancing the character’s entrancing and unflinching persona. Naomi is immediately introduced to the audience through her looks – as soon as she walks into the party, Jordan Belfort and his gang of brokers can’t help but drool over her.
Robbie shared her fears about taking on the unattainable attractiveness of the so-called Duchess of Bay Ridge. She told Wonderland: “I was very conscious that the script said, ‘The sexiest blonde ever’. Clearly I’m not the sexiest blonde in history.”
Despite her reservations, her performance makes us believe she’s the sexiest blonde ever. Naomi’s sexuality is a significant part of her character, used to manipulate Jordan endlessly, and Robbie toes the line between calculating and captivating perfectly.
Upon Naomi’s first flirtation with Jordan, she’s untouchably cool and assured. The scene birthed one of Robbie’s performance’s most iconic moments. With an impeccable accent and purposeful hand movements, she daringly asks, “We’re gonna be friends?” She takes her time with the moment, raising her eyebrow and swirling the straw in her drink before assuredly stating, “We’re not gonna be friends”. Every line feels meticulously planned, with Naomi holding her sexuality over Jordan.
Robbie has since explained how she developed the characteristic Brooklyn accent and pointed hand movements in Wonderland: “My acting coach back in L.A, Nancy Banks, said pretend you have acrylic nails, and they’ve just been put on and they’ve painted them and they’re still wet. Suddenly I’m doing all these hand gestures and then, that’s where the accent started.”
Her technique really comes into its own in her fight scenes opposite DiCaprio. Pointing the finger at her multi-millionaire husband, she delivers the iconic “Who? Who? What are you a fucking owl?” line before stalking around the bedroom, waving her hand movements, putting her whole body into her performance.
She’s a brazen match for DiCaprio’s performance, never allowing him to dominate a scene. The two bounce off each other effortlessly, with equal parts chemistry and contempt. She spits lines like, “Stop flexing your muscles Jordan you look like a fucking imbecile,” at him with disgust. With a quickness and wit that always matches the pace of the film, Robbie never misses a beat opposite her seasoned co-star.
Approaching the climax of the film, another argument between the two leads culminates in divorce. Impressively, Robbie and DiCaprio worked together on more than just the performance of this scene – together, they developed the idea for DiCaprio’s character to make a cocaine-fuelled attempt to drive away with their daughter. In an appearance on BAFTA’s A Life In Pictures series, Robbie explained how the scene came about: “We started riffing, and we locked ourselves in a room until like three in the morning and came up with all of that. And the sex scene that comes before that.”
She continues: “We were a couple of months into the shoot at that point. The tone had been set that it was a bit of a free for all. It was like the crazier you are, the more Marty will like it. And the more screen time you’re going to get.”
It’s the moment we see Robbie’s performance at its most desperate, adding a depth of care to the character as she runs after their child. With a voice that sounds on the verge of angry tears, she bangs on the car and smashes the window. In the character’s final moments, she leaves Jordan bleeding, without a word. It’s a powerful silence that retains the character’s power until the very end.
With all his money, power and drugs, Jordan Belfort still can’t match the enigmatic Naomi. So much of her potency in the film is down to Robbie’s magnetic performance as she embodies the stubbornness and sexuality of Naomi. Effortlessly slipping into an ensemble cast that was so male, so senior to her, and so much more established than her, she undoubtedly made her mark on the 2013 blockbuster, from rewriting scenes to her purposeful delivery. It’s an astounding breakout.
The biopic grossed $392million, making it Scorsese’s highest-earning film. Much of the critical praise was directed at Robbie’s performance, and she became a near-overnight sensation, setting up her own production company and going on to gain an Academy Award nomination for her role in I, Tonya.
Just a decade on from her breakthrough role, she now takes on the starring role in the biggest film of the summer, Barbie. From one historical blonde to another, Margot Robbie’s career shows no signs of slowing down.
