Truth and lies, Tonya
Director Craig Gillespie and writer Steven Rogers lift the veil on I, Tonya’s tall tales
JEAN-LUC GODARD ONCE said, “Cinema is truth 24 frames a second.” He might have to revise that opinion upon seeing I, Tonya. Craig Gillespie’s account of the rise and fall of Olympic ice skater Tonya Harding, who was implicated in and disgraced by an attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan in 1994, has a deliberately slippery relationship with the idea of objective truth, as it presents different viewpoints: Harding’s (Margot Robbie), her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly’s (Sebastian Stan), and her venal mother, Lavona’s (an Oscar-winning Allison Janney). We spoke to Gillespie, and the movie’s writer, Steven Rogers, about the truth, the whole truth, and anything but the truth.
How did you know where to begin in capturing the truth of Tonya Harding’s story? Rogers:
I interviewed Tonya Harding to start with. For me, the difficulty was that she has told this story a lot. So I had to surprise her or challenge her. And when I interviewed Jeff, his version of events was the polar opposite of Tonya’s. Right away, I knew I was going to put everybody’s point of view up there and try to be true to them. The trick was to juggle all of that and tell an entertaining story.
Gillespie: In some ways it was freeing that we weren’t necessarily telling the truth, but telling their version of the truth. I also went back and looked at all the footage I could find of Tonya. It was fascinating to watch those interviews and analyse her when she was talking. How much truth is there in what she’s saying? When Jeff’s saying, “I never hit her,” does he truly believe that? Or is he saying that to defend himself?
Rogers: That’s an aspect I always found really interesting. The things we tell ourselves in order to live with ourselves. We change the narrative.
Gillespie: In the screenplay, it wasn’t that clear whose version of the truth we were listening to. You start to forget that this is somebody’s version right now, this is not the truth. There’s a long section where the audience thinks it’s the narrative, but it’s Jeff’s version of events for about ten to 15 minutes.
What was on your mind with Tonya? People have their own idea of what she was like in real life, and she’s still very much around. Rogers:
I always felt we didn’t get a very nuanced portrait of her at all in the media. One, Tonya, was the villain, one, Nancy Kerrigan, was the princess, and that’s what we got. I felt that anything I brought to it was going to be more. Again, thematically there were things I wanted to talk about. She’s a complicated person and I wanted it to be messy, and I wanted it to be complicated.
Did she really say, “Who would do that to a friend?” Rogers: Gillespie:
I think that was me.
The lines have now blurred so much that it’s true.
There are two Jeffs in the film. The abusive husband, which is Tonya’s recollection, and the bumbling, well-meaning idiot, which is Jeff’s. Rogers:
I genuinely like Jeff. He was not at all what I thought he was going to be. Because Tonya’s memories of him are so one-sided and over-the-top. So when I met him I was very circumspect because I didn’t know what I was going to encounter. He couldn’t even understand why I wanted to tell the story. It happened so long ago. His version is he never hit her. That, I found really interesting.
Gillespie: It was the toughest part of the puzzle for me, finding who was going to play that role. I thought it was so critical
to understanding Tonya’s journey, with the domestic violence that was going on. But to understand that cycle where she kept coming back to him was tricky. We auditioned people for three months and finally Sebastian came in. My casting agent handed me his headshot. I was like, “The guy from Captain America?” She said, “Just wait.” He came in and had the moustache and the turtleneck and blew me away.
Lavona, Tonya’s mother, is an incredible character. How much of the real Lavona is in her? Rogers:
I didn’t get a chance to interview Lavona. Tonya told me she didn’t know if she was dead or alive. I didn’t want to know. The only thing Jeff and Tonya did agree on was Lavona. She becomes your own creation. There was one line I wrote, where Lavona goes onto the ice and the coach says, “There’s no smoking on the ice,” and Lavona says, “I’ll smoke it quietly.” I texted Tonya, and said, “Hey, did your mom smoke?” She said, “No.” I thought, “She does now.” You can take licence. It’s not a documentary. You’re creating, hopefully, a piece of art, so you have to make it its own thing.
With the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, how much do you tweak to make it work cinematically? Gillespie:
That’s fairly close to how it happened. I don’t know exactly what happened in the hallway, how many hits it was, we don’t know the details of that. But in terms of his [Shane Stant, her attacker] escape, he literally ran to the door, it was a glass door, he was holding a baton, he decided to headbutt it and shatter it…
Rogers: When he could have used the baton!
Gillespie: He then tackled an elderly man on the sidewalk. These things actually happened.
Rogers: The real Shane Stant has seen the movie. What did he say? He said, “It’s pretty accurate.”
I, TONYA IS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY AND DOWNLOAD