Emma Mackey says it's time to put those Margot Robbie comparisons to bed
"It would be nice to move past that," said Mackey of the frequent mix-ups
Breaking news, folks. Margot Robbie and Emma Mackey, two actresses who were born in different years on different continents and have had very different career trajectories (up ‘til now), are not the same person. And while we’re at it, neither are Samara Weaving, Jaime King, Jaime Pressly, or Faith Ford, despite the internet’s long-standing insistence on the contrary. OK, do we have that settled? Deep breath, everyone.
Emma Mackey, who is set to star alongside her doppelgänger fellow actress who is a completely different person in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie movie, addressed the comparisons in a recent interview with Total Film.
“It’s just funny,” she said. “I think Margot has had the grace and humor to be able to play on that, and allow me to be in the same film as her – bless her. It’s just a joke in real life. I’m like, ‘We don’t look anything like each other.’ I don’t mind it. It’s Margot Robbie. Are you kidding me? She’s the best. I look up to her so much. I don’t mind the comparisons. But it would be nice to move past that.”
This is not the first time either star has addressed the public’s insistence that they must be at least, like, third cousins or something. In a 2019 interview with BBC Radio 1 (per Insider), Margot Robbie revealed that the mix-ups have gone both ways: “Someone came up to me, I was eating a burger,” she said. “And they were like ‘I loved you in Sex Education, that show is so cool, we just started watching it.’ And I was like ‘I’m so sorry, it’s not me.’”
Despite all this, Mackey insists, “I genuinely just don’t see it at all.” She continues, in an interview with The Independent, “Like, it’s lovely to be compared to Margot Robbie, but mostly I’d rather people focus on the jobs that we’re both doing rather than what we look like.”
People certainly will after the release of Barbie on July 21, 2023, which Mackey claims is “one of the best scripts all of us had read” (this isn’t the first time we’ve heard this!). Ryan Gosling, Issa Rae, Alexandra Shipp, Hari Nef, Dua Lipa, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Scott Evans, Ncuti Gatwa, Simu Liu, and Michael Cera (who are all different people) round out the film’s star-studded cast.