Margot Robbie To Lead Tonya Harding Movie ‘I, Tonya’
Margot Robbiewill follow up her villainous turn inSuicide Squadby playing another famous baddie. She’s just attached herself toI, Tonya, a biopic about American ice skater Tonya Harding. Though a gifted athlete, Harding really shot to lasting infamy when she hired someone to incapacitate fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan ahead of the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.Deadlinegot the scoop on the Margot Robbie Tonya Harding project. Robbie is now out to find a director to bring to life the script bySteven Rogers(Love the Coopers). She is producing through her LuckyChap Entertainment banner, alongsideBryan Unkelessand Clubhouse Pictures. Harding wrote his screenplay based on extensive interviews with Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly. The trade comparesI, Tonyato Gus Van Sant’sTo Die For, a black comedy that starred Nicole Kidman as a weather reporter who manipulates a group of teenagers into murdering her husband.
Harding overcame a rough blue-collar childhood in Portland to rise to the top of a sport dominated by wealthier competitors. Her career peaked in 1991, when she became the first American to land a triple axel at an international event. In 1994, she and Kerrigan were selected to represent the U.S. at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Several weeks before the competition, Kerrigan was attacked by a man who’d been hired by Harding and Gillooly to break her leg. Fortunately, her leg was only bruised, not broken, and Kerrigan recovered in time to win the silver medal at the Olympics. Harding came in eighth.
The scandal sparked a media frenzy, and made figure skating one oftheevents to watch at that year’s Olympics. Gillooly soon turned on Harding, who eventually pleaded guilty. She was stripped of her 1994 U.S. Championships title after the U.S. Figure Skating Association conducted their own investigation and concluded she had known about the attack, and banned from the organization for life.
Robbie can currently be seen opposite Tina Fey inWhiskey Tango Foxtrot, and will be seen later this summer inThe Legend of TarzanandSuicide Squad. In the short time since she broke out in Martin Scorsese’sThe Wolf of Wall Street, she’s proven herself to be an impressively versatile and charismatic actress — check out her understated work in Craig Zobel’sZ for Zachariahto see her in a different kind of role.
