The special permission Quentin Tarantino gave to Margot Robbie
Actors often point to a single director they dream of working with, but achieving that goal isn’t necessarily a given. Margot Robbie is one of the lucky ones, not only because she dreamed of watching Quentin Tarantino work, but also because she became close enough to ask the director for a creative favour.
After rocketing to superstardom in 2013, thanks to her breakthrough role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, Robbie quickly took on the DC Comics universe as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad. Heavy-hitting roles continued, and in 2019, Robbie starred as Sharon Tate in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
This western set in 1969 was the start of a relationship that transcended a single project and was the fulfilment of a lifelong dream for Robbie. “Beyond anything, I’ve just always wanted to see him work,” Robbie told IndieWire after her role in Hollywood was announced. “And I want to see how he runs a set and how he directs people, and what the vibe is onset, and what’s in the script, and then what happens on the day.”
Robbie’s appreciation for Tarantino’s work extended beyond one project, and she found inspiration in his work for her movie Birds of Prey. The 2020 film, directed by Cathy Yan and starring Robbie as DC Comics character Harley Quinn, focuses on a gang of women involved in the criminal underworld working together to save Cassandra Cain, who in previous incarnations has been known as Batgirl. The all-female superhero group includes Black Canary, Huntress and Renee Montoya. The villain they face is Black Mask, played by Ewan McGregor.
The film follows a group of women with unique superpowers working together, which reminded Robbie of a bit from Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction. Mia Wallace describes to Vincent Vega a TV pilot she shot that never went anywhere, called Fox Force Five. It was about a team of female secret agents, each with their own particularly lethal skill. Wallace’s character was “the deadliest woman in the world with a knife,” but this creation was just a small, throwaway line in Tarantino’s celebrated film.
However, Robbie saw the parallels between this theme and her own film, which she pitched and produced as well as starred in. So, she decided to ask Tarantino if she could use his jokey television show as the working title for her next project. “He thought it was really funny,” Robbie commented, and he gave her his blessing. While Fox Force Five may never exist, Birds of Prey was released in February 2020 and received relatively positive reviews, though it didn’t break even with production costs and dealt with controversial reshoots that left Yan out of the loop.
What started as a lifelong dream for an actor turned into the best-case scenario: continuing to be inspired by an artist even after finishing a project together. Not every creative duo can boast of keeping such a good relationship, but maybe it was possible for Robbie and Tarantino because of their mutual love of the craft.
“I’m just fascinated by all of it, fascinated,” Robbie concluded. “So it’s going to be a crazy experience to witness firsthand. It’s something I’ve always dreamed of doing.”
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