Margot Robbie Blames Cancel Culture For Ruining Parties
Margot Robbie says parties like the ones in her new movie Babylon would not be possible today, when everything can be recorded.
Babylon saw a limited release this year, and fans were treated to the sight of Margot Robbie partying onscreen in unforgettably sexy ways. Part of the movie’s theme is that it serves to celebrate the insane excesses of America’s party culture in the 1920s. Robbie raised more than a few eyebrows when she told Total Film that cancel culture is one of the reasons we can’t have awesome parties like this anymore because everyone is always recording everything.
The controversial statement began when Margot Robbie started comparing real-life parties to the ones we see onscreen in Babylon. At first, she praised how the film set recreated the “loopy” feeling of an actual party before discussing how, while “people still party and have fun,” they can no longer do so with the abandonment of people in the 1920s. That’s because “everyone has an iPhone” and the possibility of getting recorded means it’s “impossible to behave the way they were behaving in the 1920s.” This is honestly a rather innocuous statement, but it didn’t take long for opponents on different sides of the political aisle to take her comments and run with them.
For example, in a vacuum, it’s easy to say that Margot Robbie’s comments about Babylon may indicate a wider criticism of cancel culture, but it seems she is keenly aware of how the things people say and do can quickly land someone in hot water. In other interviews, she has discussed how she made an impulsive decision to give film costar Brad Pitt an unscripted kiss because she thought it suited the character and the scene. This ended up spawning a major online discourse on how a hypothetical male actor would get immediately canceled for giving a female costar an unscripted kiss.
Putting these two Babylon interviews together, one thing about Margot Robbie becomes very clear: she is a relatively impulsive person who likes to live in the moment. When she felt an impulse to kiss Brad Pitt (an impulse shared by countless people all over the world), she didn’t hesitate to act on that impulse. And she seems to have regrets about living in a world where anyone can record someone else’s impulsive actions (like that nude scene with her character in The Wolf of Wall Street) and put them onto the internet for millions of people to dissect and discuss.
Fortunately, any controversy Margot Robbie generates by talking about Babylon and cancel culture is likely to fade away in the face of the film’s potential success. It was designed to be Oscar bait, and the limited release window for 2022 helps make the film eligible for next year’s Academy Awards. So if Robbie ends up taking home a gold statue that night, we’re pretty sure few people will remember or care about a throwaway comment in a single interview.
Such future success for Margot Robbie, though, depends on the future success of Babylon. It’s one thing to design an Oscar bait movie and it’s another thing to get the Academy to take the bait that’s been laid out. If all else fails, though, Robbie seems to be the only actor to be safe in James Gunn’s brave new DC Universe!
