The only direction Margot Robbie received from Martin Scorsese
When Martin Scorsese’s biographical movie The Wolf of Wall Street arrived in 2013, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, the world was introduced to the true acting force that is Margot Robbie. The Australian captivated audiences and cemented herself within Hollywood as she played Jordan Belfort’s second wife, Naomi Lapaglia, in her breakout role.
When Robbie was on the set of Scorsese’s movie, she got the usual treatment from the director, in the sense that she, like most of his other stars, was entrusted to take her character into her own hands, to interpret her as she saw fit. In fact, throughout production, Scorsese only actually gave her one piece of direction.
“He only gave me one piece of direction on that whole film,” Robbie once told BAFTA. “In [the] six months that we shot it, he one time gave me direction. Not that he didn’t — we spoke all the time. He’d tell stories.”
She continued: “I’d sit at video village, he’d tell stories about like mafia members and old film stars and all this kind of stuff. So we hung out all the time. But he didn’t actually give direction”. Evidently, there was a level of trust when it came to Robbie and Scorsese’s working relationship.
But on that “one piece of direction”, Robbie admitted that she wasn’t actually sure what the director meant, so perhaps it was for the best that she was left to her own devices. The direction was rather ambiguous, so it’s understandable that Robbie was confused by it, to say the least.
The actor noted: “So the only piece of direction I got was in the water-throwing scene; I remember at one point, he’s like, ‘Can you be more on your toes?’. And I didn’t know if he meant metaphorically, like, figuratively, or literally, like, it was like a leaning forward spatial thing.”
Robbie was put on the spot and didn’t want to disappoint one of the greatest directors of all time in what would become her breakout movie. She added: “I wasn’t sure, so I did a bit of both. And then, that was kind of it as far as direction went.”
The on-the-spot gamble paid off because Robbie was a sensation in the movie and learnt just how Scorsese liked to work on set. She concluded: “The tone had been set that it was a bit of a free-for-all on that film. It was kind of like, the crazier you are, the more Marty’s gonna love it and the more screen time you’re gonna get. So, it was a bit of a sink-or-swim situation.”
