Margot Robbie has excelled at playing real people on screen.

In 2019, she played Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” and the year before, she took on Queen Elizabeth I in “Mary Queen of Scots.” In a career-making performance — for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Oscar — Robbie portrayed disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding in 2017’s “I, Tonya.”

Tackling the role of Kayla Pospisil — an ambitious young Fox News producer who falls prey to Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) — in “Bombshell” presented a much different challenge. Unlike Charlize Theron’s Megyn Kelly and Nicole Kidman’s Gretchen Carlson, Robbie’s character is fictional, a composite created by screenwriter Charles Randolph to illustrate Ailes’ late-stage sexual harassment and abuse — just before his Shakespearean downfall in the summer of 2016.

“I didn’t understand her to begin with,” Robbie says. “But my process is to do a ton of research, consider every single option, know every single situation, scenario, thought and motivation inside and out, so I can step onto set and then let it all go.”

She set about figuring Kayla out, using a methodology “Bombshell” director Jay Roach calls “a nerdy desire to get it all down.” She watched the Fox News shows Kayla would have liked, and created a fake Twitter account so she could observe the performative opinionating of “young millennial conservative girls.” (Robbie wouldn’t specify whom she followed, but picture the Tomi Lahrens of the world.)

And she perfected Kayla’s speaking voice, twisting her Australian drawl into a perky Floridian lilt. Roach urged Robbie to watch footage of Katherine Harris, Florida’s former secretary of state, who became famous during the aftermath of the Bush v. Gore presidential election of 2000 and was played by Laura Dern in Roach’s 2008 HBO movie “Recount.” Harris grew up privileged and evangelical in Florida, as did Kayla. “I just love the sounds of her vowels — they’re incredible,” Robbie says. But Harris wasn’t her sole touchpoint: “Every day, I’d do the monologue from ‘Legally Blonde,’” she says, citing Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods as the type of character who is “incredibly smart” but “underestimated because of their looks.”

Robbie’s hard work in “Bombshell,” which was released by Lionsgate, has paid off. She will compete in the supporting actress category this week at the Golden Globes, as well as for outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 19. She is a front-runner for an Oscar nomination.

The awards recognition capped off a year in which Robbie created a stir with her affectionate portrayal of Tate in “Once Upon a Time” and filmed “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn,” a spinoff from the 2016 film “Suicide Squad” that she conceived more than four years ago. The movie, which Robbie stars in and produced, hits theaters on Feb. 7. She is currently shooting James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad,” a sequel to the original film, in Atlanta. It’s slated for release Aug. 6, 2021.

Full interview: variety.com

Margot Robbie took to Twitter to prepare for her role as a conservative news producer and aspiring broadcast journalist for Fox News in “Bombshell.”

“Understanding her upbringing and her point of view on politics in the world, that really took me a minute,” Robbie says on today’s episode of “The Big Ticket,” Variety and iHeart’s movie podcast.

She added, “Twitter was extremely helpful. I would follow these young, conservative girls who are very vocal with their beliefs and their political points of view. And that was fascinating because they’re my age. In some ways, we’d have a lot in common. And then, in other ways I was like, ‘We are living on totally different planets.’”

While Charlize Theron stars in the Jay Roach-directed movie as Megyn Kelly and Nicole Kidman portrays Gretchen Carlson, Robbie plays Kayla, a composite character who represents all the women who were victims of sexual harassment and misconduct by late Fox News boss Roger Ailes. Robbie’s work could land her a second Oscar nomination after garnering her first nom for last year’s “I, Tonya.”

“I was pretty rattled by the time I got to the end of [Charles Randolph’s] script, to be honest,” Robbie says. “And I knew long before I finished the script that I wanted to do it and be a part of it, just because I thought it was important to tell, and be a part of, and support in any way that I can. I hadn’t, for once, thought of the character first. I thought of the content and the messaging before kind of aligning myself with the character. That came next, was starting to understand Kayla.”

And then there’s Theron’s “insane” physical and vocal transformation to become Kelly. “The voice changed everything. It’s like she almost sat lower in her body with that voice. It altered everything and…you just lose her,” Robbie says, adding, “I really saw her disappear and she did … And she was producing at the same time. It’s not like she didn’t have one sole focus. She was being pulled in a million different directions and just handled it like a boss. She’s so impressive.”

Robbie is currently shooting writer-director James Gunn’s “Suicide Squad” sequel in Atlanta, reprising her role as Harley Quinn. When I mention that her “Suicide Squad” co-star Joel Kinnaman raved about how funny he thinks the movie is going to be when he was a guest on “The Big Ticket” last month, Robbie says, “He’s right… You’re going to be laughing a lot. It’s going to be good is all I can say for now. It’s going to be very, very good.”

But the next time fans will see Robbie as Harley is in her standalone movie “Birds of Prey.”

“The story in ‘Birds of Prey’ is told from her point of view, so you have an insight into Harley’s world in a way that you didn’t in the first ‘Suicide Squad’ film, nor that you’ll have in the next ‘Suicide Squad’ film,” Robbie says. “It’s a little bonkers. It reflects her personality. It’s heightened. It’s poppy, it’s fun, it’s violent, it’s crazy. It’s absurd. It’s kooky. It’s hilarious. It’s a little heartbreaking.”

Source: variety.com