The co-star Margot Robbie agreed to avoid at all costs: “We didn’t want to see each other”
Some on-screen chemistry is so palpable it feels like the bond between the actors is real. Some spend time off-camera working on this energy to make sure it comes across to the audience, though some, like Margot Robbie, opt for a less favourable approach.
Robbie’s list of coworkers is one of the more impressive in Hollywood. Aside from becoming a major name in her own right, Robbie has rubbed shoulders with some of the best in the business, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ryan Gosling, Will Smith, Nicole Kidman, Idris Elba, and more. She has also become a respected name as a producer, proving that it’s not just in front of the camera where she shines the most.
Although Robbie has also had her share of industry prejudice and sexism, she’s also experienced her share of dream co-stars, who are usually the ones who are so focused on delivering the best possible performance that it inspires Robbie to do the same. One such figure was Finn Cole, whom Robbie performed alongside in Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s period thriller Dreamland.
Describing Cole as “the perfect scene partner,” Robbie praised his ability to “hold the screen” as the emotional anchor, with various “dynamics and relationships” at play that make it work. There are countless others who have given Robbie the same feeling. Despite his notoriety, Jared Leto wasn’t completely the worst on that front, either, and Robbie actually described him as “conscientious” enough on set to make sure she was OK between takes.
Sometimes, however, Robbie enjoys the more unpredictable elements of the job, including taking the road less travelled to ensure a performance has the best possible chance of coming to life on screen. This was the case working alongside Saoirse Ronan in Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots, where both actors agreed to a strange “experiment” to see if their energy would work out best.
On whether their having completely different schedules helped or hindered their process, Ronan told Deadline it turned out beneficial, saying that they agreed not to see each other. She explained, “It was Margot and I that both agreed from the very beginning that we didn’t want to see each other, and we thought it would be quite a fun experiment to try, because I had certainly never tried that before.”
She went on, “Margot started before I did, and our meeting scene was the very first thing that I shot. To know in the three weeks that I had off, all of the English court stuff was being shot, and that this whole world was existing that I didn’t really know anything about was exhilarating. You were sort of guessing what they were up to, and who was in alliance with who, and it just meant that when we did finally do that meeting scene, we were acting definitely, but it was personal. It became a very, very emotionally loaded day for us.”
For Robbie, the isolation helped, too. In fact, seeing the other actors on set become closer with each other helped her lean into her part more and feel that sense of loneliness that came from ostracisation. It might have been a slightly extreme measure, but remaining apart made their dynamic cut through to the surface.
