Margot Robbie Talks Being Redneck Skater Tonya Harding In W Magazine November 2017

Actor Margot Robbie covers the November 2017 issue of W Magazine. Melanie Ward styles Robbie in Calvin Klein 205W39NYC, Gucci, Celine, Isabel Marant, Nili Lotan, Louis Vuitton and more for images by Craig McDean. 

Robbie is interviewed by Lynn Hirschberg, admitting that she was only four-years-old and living in Australia when "self-described redneck from Oregon", figure skater Tonya Harding was implicated in a plot to take down fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan. Harding’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, and her bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt, were eventually charged with criminal conspiracy to commit assault. 

Riveted by the script, Robbie immediately agreed to star in and produce the film—despite that fact that she had never figure skated in her life. “I did four months of training, five days a week, four hours a day,” she recalled. “On Christmas Eve, I was at the rink. And now I actually really miss it. I kept my ice skates—but I said goodbye to a whole world of pain that I didn’t realize came along with figure skating.”

The bubbly optimist Robbie had to take on the very difficult challenge of assuming Harding’s working-class accent and anti-figure-skater physique. “Once I put on the wig, which altered my hairline, and bleached my eyebrows, I started to see Tonya,” Robbie said. “The hardest part was losing my natural laugh. It needed to be Tonya’s laugh. I couldn’t do a triple axel like Tonya, but I was able to master her laugh.”

Harding went on to become a boxer, but Robbie had already picked up that skill in her role as Harley Quinn in 'Suicide Squad'. Read on at W Magazine.