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| Sebastian Stan and Margot Robbie star as Jeff Gillooly and Tonya Harding in I, Tonya VVS Films |
“She’s an incredible athlete and I think that’s one of the
tragedies of this whole situation,” says Margot Robbie (Suicide Squad, Z for Zachariah), speaking about her I, Tonya
character at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year. “‘The
Incident’ totally overshadowed her athletic abilities and what a phenomenal
achievement it was to do the triple axel.”
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| L-R: Paul Walter Hauser, Craig Gillespie, Allison Janney, Sebastian Stan, McKenna Grace, Margot Robbie Julianne Nicholson and Caitlin Carver at the TIFF World Premiere of I, Tonya Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images/TIFF |
Robbie gives the
performance of the year playing Harding in this fearlessly funny true crime
mockumentary that is sympathetic to the ex-skater’s downfall without letting
her off the hook. Throughout the film, Harding struggles to hold herself
accountable for her actions. (One could easily make a drinking game out of how
often Harding says, “It wasn’t my fault.”) The film is part David O. Russell and
part Christopher Guest as Harding and company tell their inconsistent versions
of events in manic dramatizations and documentary-style interviews. These interviews
draw upon wildly contradictory conversations Rogers conducted with Harding following
their Motel 6 rendezvous and then with her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, played by
Sebastian Stan.
Matching Harding’s athleticism was the first challenge for
Robbie, who also plays producer on the film, when trying to recreate the
skater’s on-ice feats. The Australian-born star says she brought some skating experience
to the film after briefly playing hockey when she moved to the USA. When it comes
to the more complex moves, however, I,
Tonya required a team of pros, stunt doubles, and visual effects to match
Harding’s talent. “The tricky thing was, if people are at a certain level,
they’re not allowed to work on a film because there are all these rules with
the association,” Robbie explains, “so it was hard to find girls who could
double me and would be in our film without risking injury before their
competitions.”
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| Tonya Harding after landing the triple axel in I, Tonya VVS Films |
Robbie recalls that the hardest part of the logistical
nightmare of assembling skating doubles was finding someone who could land
Harding’s famed triple axel. “It turned out almost no women can do a triple axel,”
Robbie adds. “Only like five women in the world have done it since Tonya did it
in competition, so that had to be computer generated and done with tricky
cuts.”
Director Craig Gillespie adds that the skating scenes posed
an extra challenge for their modest operation. Despite a heavy amount of screen
time devoted to stylized sequences on the rink, only three weeks of I, Tonya’s shoot were on the ice. “You
get those rinks for a finite amount of time,” he explains adding that one day
alone featured thirty set-ups of Harding on the ice and in her locker room.
“We had all these scenes in one day and we broke it down,” he explains, “and it ended
up being that we lit and shot a shot every 20 minutes.”
Robbie notes that Harding was eager to play skating coach
when the two met for character research. “She was less concerned about herself
and more concerned about me,” Robbie explains. “She offered to train me and
told me all the things she did while training.”
The star adds that Harding was easygoing about having this
difficult chapter of her life interpreted and dramatized by strangers. “I felt
like I had a responsibility to sit and look at her face to face and say that ‘I’m
going to play a character based on all these things that happened to you. It’s
a character. I’m not trying to replicate you,’” Robbie explains. “It’s like
what I said to Nadine when I met her for Wolf of Wall Street.”
Stan says his interpretation of Gillooly mirrors the film’s mix of
fact and fiction. “Meeting him was really helpful because I was able to see
where he was at later in his life,” explains Stan, “at least how he looked or
behaved; what his mindset was like.” The actor drew upon the ample YouTube
footage of Gillooly to fill in the gaps.
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| Sebastian Stan, Margot Robbie, and Julianne Nicholson in I, Tonya VVS Films |
Robbie says she also used the wealth of available footage to
create her take on Tonya, particularly the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary The
Price of Gold about Harding and “The Incident.” “Any time I create a
character, I try to imagine their childhood and all the poignant events that
happened to them as a child that, I believe, effects the person they became
later in life,” says Robbie. “Without that documentary, I would have invented
all those things, but to see how she shifted over the years was so helpful.”
Gillespie agrees that Harding’s backstory sharpens I, Tonya’s blades. “Everyone has these
preconceived ideas,” he explains. “She’s the punchline, she’s the villain, and
my goal is that you actually feel bad for her by the end of the film and you
empathize with her because nobody just lands in this moment. They’re a victim
of their upbringing and their environment.”
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| Allison Janney stars in I, Tonya VVS Films |
The darkly funny film features jarring scenes of violence as
Harding goes blow for blow with Gillooly and, from her childhood onwards,
her mother LaVona, played by Allison Janney. I, Tonya
features unflinching domestic violence that punctuates roaring
laughter from the audience with audible gasps. One scene, for example, sees
Harding berate Gillooly for not buying her favourite Dove-brand ice cream bars
while grocery shopping. He responds by smacking her in the face with a head of
lettuce. It’s funny, but with a devastating sting.
Gillespie adds that the team tested I, Tonya with and without the Dove Bar/lettuce scene, but responded best when it hit hardest. “That shot was the one where we were like, ‘Did we go too far?’ The first three takes he punched her, and I was like ‘It’s just too much,’ then I was like, ‘Try it with the lettuce in your hands. The produce.’ It puts it in this bizarre space and makes it feel less premediated in way because he was in the middle of something else.”
Gillespie adds that the team tested I, Tonya with and without the Dove Bar/lettuce scene, but responded best when it hit hardest. “That shot was the one where we were like, ‘Did we go too far?’ The first three takes he punched her, and I was like ‘It’s just too much,’ then I was like, ‘Try it with the lettuce in your hands. The produce.’ It puts it in this bizarre space and makes it feel less premediated in way because he was in the middle of something else.”
For Robbie, taking and giving
Tonya’s punches lets the film explore her story within the larger context of
abuse that doesn’t make the headlines. “It gives audiences an
opportunity to reassess how quickly they judge people and vilify people in the
media without knowing the circumstances,” she observes. “To forgive Jeff, you
understand the cycle of their abusive relationship. You understand why she went
back. You can see an audience forgive him so quickly and understand why she did
too.”
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| Sebastian Stan in I, Tonya VVS Films |
Some scenes see Harding take a blow, and perhaps return one,
and then turn to the camera to challenge the events that just transpired. Robbie
says that she and her fellow producers debated Gillespie’s idea to break the
fourth wall, but ultimately found it was the best way to address the violence
truthfully and respectfully without overwhelming audiences. “We were really
worried how to handle that,” says Robbie. “When you see her turn to the camera
and talk nonchalantly, seeing her be removed from the situation helped audiences
be removed from the situation enough to cope with it.”
The actors and director agree that the scenes are a product
of trust, careful choreography, and letting one another blow off steam when
filming became too intense. “A lot of that was on Craig,” says Stan. “He really
knew how to do that very fine dance between when it was getting too serious and
when it was being too funny, and dialing everything back.”
Gillespie adds that I,
Tonya required finding redemption in LaVona, a foul-mouth monster mommy,
who hurls everything at her daughter from insults to steak knives. “With
Allison, that character has so many incredibly tough heinous scenes,” says the
director. “Allison would always be talking about it and I would come back and
say, ‘Look, she got up every morning at five in the morning and drove her to
practice.’ As much as LaVona had her despicable qualities, it must have meant
something because she did this for a decade.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone else straddling LaVona’s dry
sense of humour and meanness. Robbie and Gillespie note that Rogers wrote I, Tonya with Janney in mind for the
part. “If a writer comes in with a rule of engagement, like, ‘I’ve already cast
one of the roles,’ as a producer, that can be kind of terrifying,” admits
Robbie. “But the fact that it was Allison Janney, we were like, there’s nobody better
and she absolutely nailed it.” Janney’s wickedness results in a scene-stealing
performance that had TIFF-goers shouting “Best Supporting Actress” during
Q&As.
LaVona might be one of the better examples for why the
mockumentary style interviews make the film click. Interview scenes with LaVona
draw upon the 30 for 30 documentary
and feature the older, frailer mother giving her version of “The Incident” at
the family home. (I, Tonya ends with
a shot of LaVona from the documentary that lets audiences see just how good
Janney is.) Janney sits tethered to an oxygen tank as years of smoking (and
karma) afflict LaVona while Pete, a little green parrot, her only friend and
family, pecks away on her shoulder. Pete is a scene-stealer, but also a bit of a diva.
“I’m in the bedroom doing this sex montage,” laughs
Gillespie, “and my AD [assistant director] comes in because we were going to
shoot with Allison for two or three hours doing the interviews with this parrot
I hadn’t met.” (The director pauses to catch his breath from laughter.) “My AD
comes in and says, ‘The woman who owns the parrot will not let Allison smoke
during the scene.’ And I’m like, ‘She’s been smoking around three-year-olds and
ten-year-olds but she can’t smoke around a parrot?’” Fortunately, Gillespie
adds that Janney found the oxygen tank as a compromise. The image of the ailing
mother trashtalking her daughter with nothing but a parrot for companionship
oddly humanizes LaVona. Comedy and tragedy sit side by side with PETA’s
approval.
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| Margot Robbie with fans on the TIFF red carpt Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images/TIFF |
The relationship between Harding and her mother, just like
her kiss-with-a-fist romance with Gillooly, and alleged rivalry with Kerrigan,
hope to offer more than audiences remember from the tabloids. “Everybody knows
‘The Incident’ and that was actually an improvised line when Margot goes, ‘And
now what you all came for: The Incident,’”
explains Gillespie. “It was never about this rivalry between them. It was all
created by the press.”
Robbie agrees that the mix of interview scenes and dramatic
interpretations let them be objective while spinning a familiar drama like a
triple axel. “It was never about turning her into a hero or a victim. The whole
point of our script is that there are so many versions of the truth,” says
Robbie. “They really were distilled down to these two archetypes that just
aren’t accurate. No one is that two-dimensional.”
I, Tonya opens in
Toronto on December 22 and expands in January.
