Margot Robbie: 4 keys to her well-deserved Oscar for ‘Babylon’

In the early 20s of the last century, the time in which ‘Babylon’ takes place, more than 50 million Americans –half of the country’s population, which is said soon– went to the movies every week. And in the rest of the world, the figures were similar. A crowd of spectators who would have fallen in love with Nellie LaRoy, the aspiring actress who comes to Hollywood out of nowhere and becomes a star… had she actually existed and not been a character sprung from the imagination of director and screenwriter Damien Chazelle .

Margot Robbie (Queensland, Australia, 1990) is in charge of interpreting this woman who breaks into the film business like a hurricane, she herself recounts in an exclusive interview with FOTOGRAMAS. More or less like, almost 100 years later and this time in reality, this Australian performer and producer did thanks to ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (M. Scorsese, 2013), her entrance, through the front door and prior to slapping Leonardo DiCaprio, in the show business. “The problem,” she explains in amazement, “is that every time I play a character, I feel like I have nothing in common with him. It’s funny, but I always think we’re two completely different people… And it’s not until much later, when other people point out all the similarities, and I look at it and say: Wow, they’re right!”

REFLECTIONS ON A GOLDEN SCREEN

“My family and friends end up finding similarities with all my characters,” continues Robbie. “With Valerie, with Sharon, even with Harley”, he laughs, recalling three of his latest roles in ‘Amsterdam’ (DO Russell, 2022), ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’ (Q. Tarantino, 2019) and the ‘Squad’ saga Suicidal’ and its spin-off, ‘Birds of Prey’ (C. Yan, 2020).

“Surely there will be someone who detects points of contact with Nellie that I don’t see now. Apart from the obvious, like we are both actresses,” he jokes. “But it is clear that there are moments that Nellie lives in ‘Babylon’ in which I have seen myself reflected. Like when she goes to its first premiere, she sees herself on a huge screen and is aware of people reacting and laughing at what she does .It’s a very strange situation…that I’ve been through too.I had my first opening night and I sat in the audience watching my work…and also my life changed almost suddenly after that.It’s different eras,Nellie is a a completely different person from me and with a lot of problems that I don’t have for my luck and that of the people around me”, he laughs animatedly. “But yes, in her journey and mine there are coincidences.”

QUEEN NELLIE

Robbie’s is a career full of intense and singular characters, but few like the one he undertakes in ‘Babylon’. A role that, he says, “at first it was for Emma Stone, but she had to resign due to scheduling problems. The pandemic delayed everything and affected everyone’s calendar. When I found out, I got hold of the script almost immediately and I read it straight away. I had never passed through my hands something that made me feel so intensely that I had to play a character. It was as if ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and Fellini’s ‘La dolce vita’ had a son “he laughs.

“I tried desperately to talk to Damien, but he still needed time to recalibrate everything. I really don’t know if he had me as his first choice or had someone else in mind. All I know is what I felt: ‘That he had “It had to be me, it had to be me. Please tell me what I have to do to get it.’ It does sound a bit like Nellie,” she jokes.

Robbie declares herself completely captivated by what, she says, “is my favorite character of all the ones I’ve played. What I like most about her is that she says everything to her face. Nellie believes that her destiny is to be a star, something which she achieves in the blink of an eye. But she comes from the most absolute poverty and suddenly finds herself in the spotlight, with a fame and success that she doesn’t know where they came from. She has an explosive character, she is a threat to her herself and also for the people around her, like Manny, Diego Calva’s character, with whom she forges an incredible bond. I say it again, it’s like a hurricane, wherever it goes it only leaves destruction… And being clear that it’s a fictional character, is inspired by real people”, he says confirming the words of Damien Chazelle, who pointed out that to compose the role of LaRoy he was inspired by actresses such as Jeanne Eagels, Joan Crawford, Alma Rubens and, especially, Clara Bow.

“I borrowed Bow’s childhood for Nellie,” Robbie declares. “When you see her acting selfishly or doing something terrible, that horrible past kind of justifies her actions, it makes you love her just the same,” she laughs. “It is also the reason that explains why he lives by and for the present: he savors the moment because he does not know how much time he has left on the face of the Earth. In fact, he did not expect to go this far, to live so long. That is why he does not think in tomorrow, nor in whether what she does today can have consequences in the future… because she doesn’t think she’s going to have one. She feels like she’s living in discount time. The truth is that it’s a very grateful role: she’s so reactive, excessive, irrational… For an actor, a role like this is a gift”.

THE GREAT SPREE

Speaking of presents, in ‘Babylon’, Chazelle gives viewers something that neither Adam McKay in ‘The Big Short’ (2015) nor Quentin Tarantino in the aforementioned ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’ managed: bringing together Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt in one take. “It was time!” exclaims the Australian. “It’s that we even make jokes about it. We say to ourselves: ‘Hey, one of these days we would have to make a movie in which we act together, but for real.’ The irony is that here we don’t coincide so much either,” he laughs. before continuing: “Nellie and Jack Conrad, her character, are in the same place a couple of times at the same time, but their destinies don’t quite intersect. I think we still need to make a movie in which we act together again…, but longer,” he says with a laugh. “At least when we shoot the scenes where we do meet, we make the most of it.”

And how not to. One of the scenes Nellie and Jack share is, in Robbie’s words, “one of the most chaotic I’ve ever seen on film, and it includes my character fighting a rattlesnake. I remember being on the set of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and thinking, ‘I’ll never shoot a crazier scene than this.’ Well, I was wrong,” she laughs. “Luckily, snakes don’t scare me, I guess because growing up in Australia I saw a lot. The thing is that the one I catch isn’t real, it’s an animatronic. Something weird because almost all the effects and animals that you see in ‘Babylon’ they are practical or real. Damien didn’t want to resort to digital effects. Most of what you see on screen is real. As was the snake in the long takes. There was a time when this one ended up right where the team was and everyone started running screaming. No one was hurt. Neither was the snake,” he laughs.

A party, a huge party in fact, that Robbie connects with the spirit of the times: “Hollywood in the 20s is thought to be elegant people, Charlestons and girls smoking cigarette holders… and no. When the audience sees the film they will say : ‘But what is this?’ Anyone who doesn’t know what Kenneth Anger’s book is about,” he says, citing ‘Hollywood Babylon’, an inescapable reference for Chazelle in the production of the film, “will be stunned. That period was one of such debauchery and danger that they leave you in shock. And how young everyone was. Not just the boys and girls who came to Los Angeles looking for fame and money. Also the studio executives. Their leaders were not even 30 years old and had budgets of millions of dollars to spend as they pleased. They went from party to party, drank, took all the drugs they could… Total debauchery. There were no rules because everything was new and nobody had stopped to think about them. When everything came out, when people started to be shocked that it had gone too far, was when the Hays Code emerged, imposing moral censorship in front of and behind the cameras. But it was only after years of what seemed like an endless orgy.”

AN (EVEN MORE) PROMISING CAREER

However, although bacchanalia and debauchery articulate and define ‘Babylon’, for Robbie the central theme of the film is something else. “For me, everything revolves around change. How times change and there are those who are capable of adapting and continuing to be relevant in this new scenario while others are not”. A reading that can be transferred to the present, with streaming taking the place in the plot occupied by the irruption of talkies. A scenario to which Robbie has adapted thanks to a versatility in front of the cameras that has given her two Oscar nominations, but also due to her facet as a producer in her company, LuckyChap Entertainment. After making his debut in this facet with ‘I, Tonya’ (C. Gillespie, 2017) and confirming his good eye by helping Emerald Fennell bring forward ‘A Promising Young Woman’ (2020), Robbie produces and stars in ‘Barbie’, one of the most anticipated films of 2023 in which, he says, “I have the opportunity to work with Greta Gerwig,” he says of the project’s director.

“Looking back,” he continues, “I see key, vital and professional moments in which my career changed. With ‘Yo, Tonya’ I felt that a new phase was beginning because it was my first leading role. Now I don’t feel like I’m starting a new chapter I enjoy an exceptional moment in my work, in which I have the opportunity to shoot with directors like Tarantino, Greta or Wes Anderson”, with which he has just finished the choral ‘Asteroid City’, with Scarlett Johansson or Tom Hanks in the cast. “I’ve always wanted to work with the best. And Damien is one of the great filmmakers of our generation. He will be spoken of in the future with the reverence we now accord to Scorsese or Fellini.” Perhaps, we note, his next turning point will be when he decides to jump into directing. “It could be. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for many years. I don’t know if it will come, but if it does, it’s absolutely clear that it will open a new and exciting chapter in my life.”