The 'I, Tonya' actress found shooting Damien Chazelle's new feature film 'liberating' because there was no limit to what she was allowed to do on the set.
- January 16, 2023
AceShowbiz - Margot Robbie felt liberated filming "Babylon". The 32-year-old actress plays wild silent movie star Nellie LaRoy in Damien Chazelle's new film and she admitted it was "madness" on set every day shooting the epic, which looks at how the screen icons of the time adapted to talking pictures amid a backdrop of Hollywood excess.
"I was allowed to do absolutely anything and it was just so liberating… it was just madness every day on set," she said when speaking at the London premiere of the movie on Thursday, January 12, 2023 night.
Margot admitted she'd love to see how films were made back in the 1920s because the antics depicted in the film were so cavalier. She told Sky News, "It was a different ball game. I would love to have seen moviemaking back then, it seemed like there were no rules and it was just madness."
While Margot has previously admitted a drunken kiss between Nellie and Brad Pitt's character Jack Conrad was improvised, she insisted most of everything else that features in the wild pool party scene was already written.
She said, "It was of the best dialogue I had ever read, and the best sequences, truly - you could improvise for fun but the script was so stunning."
The Australian actress recently admitted the film was the "craziest" of her career, and even topped the excesses of "The Wolf of Wall Street", which she never expected to happen. She said, "I remember being on set and thinking, 'I'll never be in a film as crazy as this ever again.' And then I made 'Babylon'."
"There's a dizzying amount of debauchery. One of the most disturbing, chaotic scenes I've ever witnessed is in this film, and it involves a fight with a snake. I won't tell you who wins or loses that fight but, trust me, it's insane."
Margot's alter ego is inspired by the troubled Clara Bow, the original "It" girl who scandalised the US by being open about her sexual desires during the 1920s, and the actress insists that she was willing to behave recklessly to stay true to her character. The "Amsterdam" star said, "I'd feel embarrassed if it was me, but it's all her."
