According to actress Margot Robbie, the next movie, Babylon, is her best professional achievement. Robbie’s breakthrough performance came in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, a darkly comedic biopic in which she played Jordan Belfort’s second wife (Leonardo DiCaprio). She has received praise for several of her diverse performances over the past ten years, even receiving Academy Award nominations in 2018 and 2020 for I, Tonya, and Bombshell, respectively. Brad Pitt and Robbie co-star as Nellie LaRoy, a budding actress who gets drawn into the craziness of the show industry in the 1920s, in the forthcoming Damien Chazelle film Babylon.
In a new video produced by Paramount Pictures, Chazelle, Pitt, and Robbie go into further detail about the ideas for and history of the character of Nellie LaRoy. Pitt and Robbie’s performances in Babylon were able to be “the most personal thing they had done,” according to a prior statement by director Damien Chazelle, and Robbie supports that statement in this interview. The actor continues by praising Babylon for the several roles she has had over the years, calling playing Nellie “the thing I’m most proud of” in both her work and her life. Check out the Nellie LaRoy Featurette and Robbie’s remarks below:
“As the story progresses, she realizes that Hollywood is way harder, way crazier than she ever thought it would be. I’ve never been as close to a character as Nellie before. She came in with a bang and she’s not gonna let anyone stand in her way. It’ll be the thing I’m most proud of in my entire career but also, my entire life.”
How Much of Babylon Is Based on the Truth?
Babylon is a fictionalized synthesis of the myriad myths, tales, and historical accounts that emerged from 1920s Hollywood, as made abundantly evident by director Damien Chazelle. In the brief mentioned above, the filmmaker explains that Clara Bow, among other stars of the time, served as inspiration for Nellie’s portrayal. Some regard the bow as the embodiment of the “flapper period,” and her vivacious character helped her become one of the first Hollywood “It Girls” and a sex symbol.
In Babylon, when silent films give way to “talkies,” Nellie will also be appearing in movies at this time, maybe coping with her sudden and overwhelming fame. Additionally, Nellie mentions a home life in the aforementioned tape that she finds difficult to recollect, giving away the fact that she, like Bow, entered the profession after a trying upbringing. While Nellie has been shown as having a good time in the Babylon marketing, Robbie and Chazelle’s remarks and the character’s resemblance to Bow suggest that she will encounter some really challenging challenges during the course of the film.