Margot Robbie ‘horrified’ at how little she knew about sexual harassment at workplace before making Bombshell

‘The situation isn’t black and white’

Margot Robbie has revealed that working on her 2019 film Bombshell made her realise how little she knew about sexual harassment at the workplace.

The 32-year-old actor opened up about her career and experience in the film industry when the topic was brought up at a BAFTA Life in Pictures talk.

Discussing her Bombshell character Kayla Pospisil, Robbie said the role was easy to shake because of the difficult subject matter.

“The second I could stop being Kayla, I did,” she said. “It was definitely something I wanted to tap out of at the end.”

Bombshell is based on the accounts of the women at Fox News who set out to expose CEO Roger Ailes for alleged sexual harassment.

“I realised that I – as a person with an established position in the industry, financially set up and self-sufficient – I didn’t know the definition of sexual harassment, and that’s shocking,” Robbie said.

She added that she was “horrified” about how little she knew about sexual harassment before this film and how it “flourishes in the grey area” of respective industries.

“Roger Ailes or Harvey Weinstein, they take advantage of the area,” the Barbie star said. “The situation isn’t black and white.”

(Bombshell)

Earlier this month, Robbie also reflected on the early years of her career, saying she wasn’t prepared for the consequences of fame she experienced after starring in 2013’s Wolf of Wall Street.

The actor was only 23 when she landed her breakout role as Naomi Lapaglia, the wife of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort, in Martin Scorsese’s dark comedy based on the real-life former stockbroker and his criminal behaviour defrauding wealthy investors out of millions.

“Something was happening in those early stages and it was all pretty awful, and I remember saying to my mom, ‘I don’t think I want to do this,’” she told Vanity Fair.

“And she just looked at me, completely straight-faced, and was like, ‘Darling, I think it’s too late not to.’ That’s when I realised the only way was forward.”