A very ’90s scandal shines bright in biopic
Margo Robbie’s portrayal of U.S. figure-skating bad girl Tonya Harding is mesmerizing
In a theatre named after a famous dead princess, we rambled into a theatre to see a movie about a notorious figure skater.
Only the appearance of a Menendez brother, or possibly Ms. Lewinsky herself, could have made the occasion more ’90s, so seeped was the experience, this week, of catching the world premiere of the Coenesquely comic I, Tonya (about the disgraced Tonya Harding), here at the at the Princess of Wales Theatre. You want drama, dirty linen and defamation? This was the place to get it — courtesy of a Margot Robbie-starring, Craig Gillespie-directed biopic that, almost as nearly all critics later agreed, was light years beyond your expected campfest, and one that works as a new American gothic that at its most daring and meta head-on embraces the inherent fiction of biopics.
By the time the film had run its credits — rummaging through the main, worldstopping plot points of the 1994 TonyaNancy Kerrigan Olympic ice-rink scandal — it was even all pretty clear to me: not only had the film managed to make Tonya a complicated trash princess to root for, but that Margot herself is probably the best thing to ever happen to Tonya.
It was a sentiment I shared with the Australian siren herself at the buzzy, post-midnight, Friday-into-Saturday party hosted for the film at Montecito, sponsored by Hugo Boss. When complimenting her on a mesmerizing scene, in particular, in which Margot, as Harding, looks into a mirror, putting on makeup and practising her figure-skater smile — all the while looking us filmgoers directly in the eye — she told me it was “a very difficult scene” to do.
She also confirmed to me that, yes, she’d never really heard of Harding before the film — having been raised Down Under, and only 3 years old when the notorious sporting saga occurred.
“I quickly caught up,” Robbie footnoted. Indeed, she even spent a couple of hours in Portland, Ore., with Harding herself (where the fallen skater lives, newly married and with a 6-year-old).
If there was a TIFF party that ran on a shiver of generational divide it was perhaps this Hugo Boss one — as I quickly found out! Oh, dear. For anyone in the thick of it in the ’90s, the assault on Kerrigan, and the media storm that ensued, was seared into the mind — her name jiving to the wheels of a thennew-24-hour-news-cycle — just a few months before the O.J. Simpson case broke, in fact!
Not so, for someone in their 20s today, like a certain party-staple ’round town I found at Montecito, who admitted to me he also hadn’t heard of Harding and had had to Google her before this night. He did feel glad that Robbie didn’t know either, though!
Some parties make one feel older than others: moral/story.
One thing that a scuttlebutt-hound like I also definitely got a sense of while watching I, Tonya: how much the scandal played out like early reality-TV and was also a precursor to it. The extent to which the TonyaNancy rivalry played out — the story of the wrong-side-of-tracks striver vs. the goody-two-shoes ice princess — it had, yes, the bitch-fest DNA of earlier rivalries (such as the Joan Crawford-Bette Davis one, most recently depicted in Ryan Murphy’s TV series Feud), but was also paving the way for future ones, like we have now on shows The Bachelor and the Real Housewives, and even enduring tabloid bitch-fests like the one between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.
Showing face at the I, Tonya party, too, I should mention, was the handsome Sebastian Stan (who plays Tonya’s punchline husband at the time, Jeff Gillooly) and the amazing, amazing Allison Janney (who sinks her teeth, big, into the role of Tonya’s mom!). The latter told me, when we spoke, that it was one of the best roles she’s ever played — and not only because nearly ever line contains a clenched-teeth Fbomb. I do love me some Janney. Meanwhile That was, yes, Aaron Sorkin enjoying a contemplative solo cigarette right behind the Elgin Theatre, as his movie Molly’s Game played inside, when he was suddenly beset by enterprising autograph seekers!
Later, the storied storyteller — whose directorial debut is being called “Social Network- level good” by some critics — headed off to the soiree for the movie at Citizen, on Brant St., where he celebrated with his leads, Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba. Party watch
LeBron James and Chris Bosh making the scene with Drake at the Toronto ambassador’s haunt, Fring’s, on King St. on Friday night — all in tow for the unspooling of the documentary The Carter Effect this weekend.
Greta Gerwig gamely working the room at the bash for her very personal film, Lady Bird, on the rooftop of Bisha.
Bryan Cranston huddling with Harvey Weinstein at a late-nighter hosted for their new one, The Upside, at RBC House, on Duncan.
Conrad and Barbara Black hosting a dinner for their old friend, the phantasmagorical André Leon Talley — the legendary Vogue character whose documentary, The Gospel According to André, just debuted at the fest. Shinan Govani’s transportation for the Toronto International Film Festival provided by Lincoln Canada and its 2017 Continental.