Margot Robbie Improvised ‘Babylon’ Kiss Scene with Brad Pitt: ‘Sue Me’

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read

Margot Robbie is following in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” co-star Lena Dunham’s red carpet footsteps by surprise-smooching Brad Pitt.

Robbie co-stars opposite Pitt in Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon,” and revealed to E! News that she really leaned into the spontaneity of the character…and, of course, harnessed that to kiss iconic film star Pitt.

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“That wasn’t in the script,” Robbie said, “but I thought, ‘When else am I going to get the chance to kiss Brad Pitt? I’m just gonna go for it.'”

While Robbie said the kiss was “great,” she had to convince director Chazelle to let her go for it in the moment.

“I said, ‘Damien, I think Nellie would just go up and kiss Jack,'” the “Wolf of Wall Street” alum said. “And Damien was like, ‘Well, she could — wait, hold on. You just want to kiss Brad Pitt.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, so sue me. This opportunity might never come up again.’ And he was like, ‘It does work for the character,’ and I was like, ‘I think so.'”

After the first take, Chazelle instructed, “‘No, do it again. That really works,'” to which Robbie joked, “I was like, ‘Oh, great.'”

Robbie and Pitt co-starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” but the duo had not shared scenes until “Babylon.” Robbie also noted that she additionally kissed fellow actress Katherine Waterston for the film but is unsure if it made the final cut.

The determined chaos of Robbie’s budding starlet character Nellie LaRoy is in part what led her to the film. “Terrified and excited” by the script, Robbie based her fictional character partly on Clara Bow and said that while she loves Nelly “so much,” as she explained at the film’s first Academy screening. “She’s so exhausting. She took everything from me. I had written on the front of my script, ‘Demand their full attention always.’ She did it to me. She demanded everything physically and emotionally.”

Robbie’s role has been earning the Australian actress early awards season buzz, with fellow actor Eric Roberts comparing her performance to that of Elizabeth Taylor in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.”

“I will also tell you that Margot Robbie is going to win an Academy Award for that,” Roberts said. “She gives the most incredible performance in ‘Babylon’ that I have ever seen. She blew me away. I couldn’t believe how brilliant every minute of every day she was. “

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