Margot Robbie names the best experience of her entire career: “The greatest thing ever”
No actor knows for sure until the first day on set whether or not a production is going to be a memorable experience or one to forget, but Margot Robbie lucked out when a movie she was confident was going to be a great time turned out to be exactly that and more beyond.
The likelihood of any star going through their entire career without getting involved in at least one troubled film is slim, and Robbie has already experienced a couple of them. It had nothing to do with her, but sometimes the on-camera talent gets swept up in the murky world of studio politics.
Unsurprisingly, it happened on two of her biggest films, with David Ayer’s comic book adaptation Suicide Squad being taken out of the director’s hands and re-edited into a version he barely recognised, never mind approved of, while Robbie’s solo spinoff Birds of Prey – which she also produced – saw Cathy Yan left out of the loop for reshoots that were overseen by John Wick‘s Chad Stahelski.
In a cruel twist of irony, the film that gave Robbie the greatest experience of her entire career was a disaster of a different kind. Damien Chazelle’s Babylon bombed so thunderously that studio Paramount ended up in the red to the tune of almost $90million.
It was an unexpected outcome, to say the least, because almost everyone had the period-set tale of drugs and debauchery unfolding during a pivotal moment in Hollywood history marked out as an awards season frontrunner, based entirely on the talent attached to either side of the camera.
Chazelle had steered La La Land to a huge box office and a record-tying 14 nominations at the Academy Awards, where it won seven trophies, including ‘Best Director’ but definitely did not win ‘Best Picture’ after the infamous Moonlight gaffe. The cast was just as esteemed, with Robbie sharing the spotlight with Brad Pitt, Tobey Maguire, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Samara Weaving, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze, and countless more.
Unfortunately, Babylon was a bust. Overlong and overindulgent, the ode to Tinseltown excess sent Chazelle straight to director’s jail, which wasn’t the outcome anyone expected. Before the movie had been released, Robbie was confident it would live up to the hype, which gave her the chance to live through a high point of her own.
“What you see onscreen is the chaos of making a movie and how fucked it is, but also how it’s just the greatest thing ever,” she told Vanity Fair. “And literally, filming it was the exact same thing. Shit was so unhinged and so fun and amazing and just absurd. It was definitely the best experience of my life.”
Things may not have gone according to plan once Babylon was shared with a mass audience, but at least Robbie had fun. Big things were expected of Chazelle’s eagerly-awaited La La Land follow-up, but it resolutely failed to live up to expectations regardless of how fun it was to make.
