Allison Janney on how she psyched herself up to pretend to hit a little girl in I, Tonya

I, Tonya examines the life of former Olympian Tonya Harding leading up to the U.S. Figure Skating Championship in 1994, where her ex-husband hired a man to break the leg of fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan. Much of the film follows a young Harding, played by the talented McKenna Grace, and how Harding’s relationship with her abusive mother, played by Allison Janney, shaped her psyche. In the video above, we talked to Janney about playing an abusive parent and how she prepared for a scene that required her to hit Grace with a hairbrush.