Margot – who found fame in Aussie soap Neighbours and starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street – said to judge a person on a five-second news flash is wrong
Margot Robbie studied a script built around the Winter Olympics and felt it had everything – deceit, intrigue and bitter rivalry.
But when one skater, Nancy Kerrigan , is battered by a hitman to improve the chances of rival Tonya Harding, Margot thought it was getting a little far-fetched.
Especially when the attacker had been hired by Tonya’s ex-husband. And the hapless “hitman” had first gone to the wrong rink – and had no escape plan.
But then Margot got a shock… this was a real story and it had stunned the world in 1994, when she was just three.
She said: “I kept turning the page and the scenario became even more outlandish. Imagine my surprise when I found out it was based on fact. Real life is crazier than fiction, right there.”
Tonya Harding is passed by Nancy Kerrigan during their first practice session ( Image: Getty)
Tonya Harding rises through the ranks of competitive skating only to find disgrace ( Image: Publicity Picture)
And on Friday, UK fans can see Margot portray Tonya as a new movie questions whether the figure skater who became a hate figure was actually a victim too.
Margot, 27, believes filmgoers may have a different view after seeing the darkly comic I, Tonya.
She said of the backlash against the sportswoman: “I think there was extreme misrepresentation in the media that acted as judge and jury.
“To judge a person on a five-second news flash is so wrong but we all do it every single day. After this experience, I think I’m trying to make an effort to not judge people so harshly and quickly.”
Back in 1994, Tonya’s manager – ex-husband Jeff Gillooly – hired her minder to orchestrate a kneecapping of Nancy just six weeks before the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.
While Gillooly and three other men were jailed, Tonya always denied any part – but wasn’t believed.
Now Margot has stepped on to the ice to retell the tale and landed an Oscar nomination too – all coinciding nicely with the Pyeongchang Games.
Margot posed with Tonya at the Los Angeles premiere and described finding her “gracious” and “brave”.
They had met during filming. Margot said: “She was really gracious and respectful and happy with what we achieved. She did offer to train me but I was well-rehearsed by then.”
Margot, who found fame in Aussie soap Neighbours and starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf Of Wall Street, had limited experience on the ice.
She studied hours of video footage of Tonya and trained four times a week for months – taking many tumbles.
“Growing up in Australia, on the Gold Coast, there isn’t a huge presence of ice rinks,” she said. “Strangely, I played in an ice hockey team when I moved to America. I was a terrible skater but it didn’t matter because you’re wearing so much padding.
“But this was rough. Months of falls and bruises. It hurt.”
Margot also had to master her character’s individual style. For Tonya was an athletic powerhouse, only the second in the world to land a daunting triple axel, which requires an extra half rotation in the air.
The move is so difficult that camera trickery was used to recreate it for the film. Margot added: “Our choreographer was like, ‘No, that’s impossible, only six women in the world have done it since Tonya’. So we had to work up some magic with CGI.
“That’s when it hit me just how incredible an athlete she was. To have it overshadowed was a tragedy.”
The film shows Tonya in a pitying light. She had a troubled childhood, growing up in a trailer park in Portland, Oregon, and suffering beatings at the hands of an alcoholic mum. Ice skating was, according to her coach Diane Rawlinson, her “ticket out of the gutter”.
“It was either skating or school,” Tonya recalled in an interview. “It was hard to survive – moving so much, not having many friends. But I loved my skating.”
Margot Robbie said she thinks Tonya is ‘brave’ ( Image: Entertainment One)
Tonya netted silver in the 1991 World Championships and came fourth at the 1992 Winter Olympics.
Fast forward to the eve of the 1994 Games in Lillehammer and Tonya’s form had taken a dip. Her former roommate Nancy was already an Olympic bronze medallist and among the top contenders.
Nancy, from Massachusetts, was attractive, wore designer outfits and skated to classical music.
Tonya, meanwhile, spent years wearing home-made outfits and once admitted: “She’s a princess and I’m a pile of crap.”
Their worlds would change for ever on January 6, 1994.
As Nancy was practising in Detroit for the US Championships, hired thug Shane Stant approached and whacked her right thigh with a collapsible baton.
As he fled, Nancy’s agonised cry, famously captured on video, asked: “Why? Why me?”
Nancy had to withdraw from the event, which Tonya won. Stant earned £5,000 to carry out the attack but was quickly arrested by the FBI – along with Gillooly, Tonya’s minder Shawn Eckardt and getaway driver Derrick Smith.
By January 27, Tonya begged forgiveness after admitting she had suspected their involvement after the event but didn’t alert the authorities. Both women went on to compete at the Olympics. And in one of the most-watched sporting events in US history, Nancy returned a heroine with a silver medal while tearful Tonya had to settle for eighth. There was even drama as Tonya asked for a re-skate because of trouble with her laces.
Gillooly, who testified against Tonya in a plea deal, was later jailed for two years for racketeering. Eckardt, Stant and Smith also served time.
Tonya admitted conspiring to hinder the prosecution of the four men and was given probation, community service – and a whopping £110,000 fine.
She was banned from skating for life and later stripped of all her medals.
Tonya has always denied knowing about the plot in advance and even claimed Gillooly’s warped aim was intended to destroy her career. In her 2008 book The Tonya Tapes she said Gillooly beat her and threatened to kill her in order to keep her silent after the attack. “I was scared to death,” she said.
The film is based on screenwriter Stephen Harding’s lengthy interviews with both Tonya and Gillooly, with the audience left to make their own mind up about how much she knew.
After her spectacular fall from grace, Tonya turned to boxing and later became a welder. She is now 47, a painter and decking fitter and is married with a son.
Nancy, 48, married her agent and has three children. She won’t watch the film, saying: “I was the victim. Like, that’s my role in this whole thing. That’s it.”
