As you might know, your fave and ours Margot Robbie stars in an upcoming biopic about American figure skater Tonya Harding, called I, Tonya. The story is incredible: in the mid-90s, Harding was embroiled in scandal after her ex-husband hired goons to break the legs of her competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, so she wouldn’t be able to compete against her in the upcoming Winter Olympics.
The goon-hiring ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, is played in the film by Sebastian Stan, who you might remember as the extremely dreamy Bucky / The Winter Soldier from the Captain America films.
Apparently Harding and Gillooly had a particularly volatile relationship, which the film does its best to depict. One bit that didn’t end up in the finished product: an all-out brawl between Robbie and Stan, which ended with her socking him one in the head.
How did this come up? Someone at the Toronto Film Festival asked Robbie what her favourite part of shooting the movie was. And it was punching her co-star in the head. Incredible.
The scene is part of a montage that sees the violence between Harding and Gillooly reach such a frenzy that the cops show up.
Robbie told the reporter:
[The director] kind of on the day was like, ‘Just do whatever in the moment,’ and we got so carried away that I genuinely forgot that we were on a film set and that I wasn’t Tonya and that he wasn’t Jeff.
We got into, like a brawl. He slams my hand into the door. And I endded up storming off down the street, which was like, the end of set, so I was just on the road in the real world.
And you [Sebastian Stan] were coming after me screaming, ‘Where are you going?’ I think you even said, ‘Margot,’ and I said, ‘I’m going to the hospital because you broke my hand!’ And I was so caught up in it and I think I punched you in the side of the head!
Stan concurred that Robbie did indeed punch him in the side of the head, but that hasn’t stopped her from considering it her favourite part of the shoot.
That ended up being my favourite scene because I forgot that I was acting, and nothing makes me more exhilarated when I genuinely forget where I am.
Sure, Margot. It was the thrill of being absorbed in your art that really overjoyed you, and not the fact that you got to clock someone in the side of the noggin and get away with it.
You sly dog.
