The terrible movie Margot Robbie agreed to make without reading a script: “Well, I’m in”
Everyone makes mistakes, but when you’re an actor, picking a role that turns out to be an utter flop is something you then have to face in the spotlight. Most of the time, the average person’s mistakes are quickly swept under the rug, but star in a terrible film and it’ll likely haunt an actor forever. The key to distracting from bad movie choices is simply to star in a string of much better ones, which is something Margot Robbie has mastered.
Despite her status as one of the most well-known actors in the current cinematic landscape, she’s actually appeared in a few questionable or simply unexpected films, like Goodbye Christopher Robin, Peter Rabbit, and The Legend of Tarzan. None could be as universally panned as Suicide Squad, however, which saw her play Harley Quinn.
Released in 2016, it was a worldwide phenomenon, yet critics largely detested it, with the film earning two Golden Raspberry nominations, including ‘Worst Screenplay’. It grossed a whopping $749.2million, though, evidently proving that a movie doesn’t have to be good to be successful.
The movie could’ve been career-tarnishing for Robbie, but luckily, it was her performance that stood out as the best, and she actually took home a Critics’ Choice Movie Award for ‘Best Actress in an Action Movie’, Still, Robbie’s filmography would look a lot more impressive if she hadn’t taken on the part in the cringe-inducing movie, but interestingly, she actually agreed to the role before even reading the script.
In fact, there wasn’t even a script when she signed on – she just really wanted to play Harley Quinn. It’s a bold decision to dedicate yourself to a movie before you know many details about it, and hopefully Robbie learned from her mistake (although I’m sure she laughed all the way to the bank). In an interview, the actor revealed, “I was like, ‘Okay, can I read the script?’ And they were like, ‘There’s no script.’ ‘Okay, is there anyone attached?’ ‘No one attached.’ ‘Is there a director?’ ‘Yeah, David Ayer.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I’m in!’ And that was kind of it!”
Robbie wanted to work with Ayer, who had previously written movies like Training Day and The Fast and the Furious while possessing directorial credits such as Fury and Sabotage. No offence to Ayer, but it’s hard to see what was making Robbie so desperate to work with him that she was willing to sign on without even seeing a script. Clearly, she should’ve read one, because Suicide Squad was a mess.
That didn’t stop Robbie from reprising her role as Harley Quinn two more times, though. She appeared in the spin-off Birds of Prey in 2020, which was a surprising box office failure, before appearing in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, which is generally regarded as much better than Ayer’s Suicide Squad.
Still, these film choices sit at odds with Robbie’s much more interesting roles, like Tonya Harding in I, Tonya, Nellie LaRoy in Babylon, or even the titular character in Greta Gerwig’s worldwide sensation Barbie.
