This year's SAG Awards feature an assortment of multiple nominees across categories. Nicole Kidman, Al Pacino, and Scarlett Johansson scored a rare triple nod and they weren't the only ones. Margot Robbie also did it thanks to her participation in two of this season's juiciest awards magnets. In Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, she's Sharon Tate, while, in Bombshell, Robbie gives life to Kayla Pospisil, a fictional character that stands in for many of the women victimized by Fox News' toxic work environment.
Since Cannes, Tarantino's take on Hollywood's most tragic ingenue has been put through heavy scrutiny. Robbie's role has been accused of being a misogynistic and limited take on Sharon Tate, terminally underwritten and underutilized to boot. Even so, Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood is a critics' darling while Bombshell has been promptly lambasted as soon as the review embargo ended. Controversies notwithstanding, I confess myself dismayed at the way Margot Robbie's Oscar hopes seem to have concentrated solely on the Jay Roach flick…
Sharon Tate may not have many lines in Quentin Tarantino's elegy for the dying days of Old Hollywood, but Margot Robbie makes the most of what she's given. Moreover, her Sharon Tate is essential to the film's tone of melancholic reveries about days long gone and stars long forgotten. She's both a symbol and a real woman. She's a paragon of goodness in a doomed world and a kind-hearted actress going about her day-to-day life. She's a dream of glamour and surprisingly banal. This is a bit of a contradiction and the success of her portrayal hinges in acting that contradiction as a coherent personality.
I've written about the perils of playing a good person but Robbie is magnetic as Tate, charismatic in a way that seems innate and completely effortless. Her sunny disposition feels perfectly natural, even when it's shaded by the discomfort of a pregnant woman suffering through a smoldering August night. There's humanity to this idol, the sort which shines in little gestures like a bashful smile at the box-office or the automatic motion to greet everyone with a hug.
It's delicate work and easily underestimated. After three visits to the wonders of Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood, I still get teary-eyed at the sheer joy Robbie's Tate shows while in the cinema, her limpid expression calling to mind Mia Farrow's emotional clarity while staring at the silver screen in The Purple Rose of Cairo. There's also her carefree sweetness in the last moments of the fairytale, an emotional gut-punch that's delivered like a tender kiss. Without her, the picture wouldn't work.
Bombshell might be Margot Robbie's ticket to Oscar glory but that doesn't mean it features her best performance of 2019.