Margot Robbie Had Never Heard of Tonya Harding Before Shooting ‘I, Tonya’
If you’re not lucky enough to attend the Toronto International Film Festival this year, you can spend it like the rest of us: keeping an ear to to the ground and trying to decide which TIFF releases will be must-see movies of 2017 and 2018. One early standout is I, Tonya, a humorous look at the life of infamous figure skater Tonya Harding. Our own Senior Editor has described it as darkly hilarious film with dynamite performances (review coming soon!), and that seems to be the general consensus: it’s funny, it’s twisted, and, for as much as any of you care, it’s an early contender for all kinds of award season glory.
But the real kicker? It comes with one of those incredible soundbites you just can’t help but enjoy. In a recent interview with The Wrap, I, Tonya star Margot Robbie confessed that she assumed the entire story was fake when she first read the screenplay and that she had no idea that Tonya Harding was a real person:
To be honest, when I read the script, I didn’t know who Tonya Harding was, and I didn’t realize it was a true story. I thought it was entirely fictionalized and our writer Steve [Rogers] was so creative to come up with the quirky characters and absurd incidents.
As she says in the interview, Robbie would’ve been four years old when the shocking events of the film took place, so unless she was a huge figure skating fan at an early age — or spent countless hours watching episodes of I Love the 90s on VH1 — she probably deserves a pass for not knowing who Tonya Harding is. Regardless, it sounds like Robbie and company have put together the second-best adaptation of Tonya Harding’s life story. What’s the first, you might ask? It’s still Weird Al’s “Headline News,” now and forever. Mmm mmm mmm mmm, mmm mmm mmm mmm.