Margot Robbie doesn't get why Babylon wasn't more popular

Babylon truthers, Margot Robbie stands with you. During an expansive conversation on the Talking Pictures podcast, host Ben Mankiewicz praised the film and questioned, “Why don’t people like this movie?” Robbie exclaimed, “I’m still saying that!” She added, “I love it… I don’t get it either. I know I’m biased because I’m very close to the project and so obviously I believe in it. But I still can’t figure out why people really hated it.”

Though Damien Chazelle’s historical cinema epic was a commercial failure that debuted to mixed reception, it’s been slowly finding a dedicated audience in the time since its 2022 release. (The A.V. Club was in early, by the way; we gave it an A rating at the time.) “I often wonder if in 20 years, people are gonna be like, ‘Wait, Babylon didn’t do well at the time? That’s crazy!'” Robbie pondered. “You know, when you hear something like Shawshank Redemption was a failure at the time, or whatever it is, and you’re like ‘Huh, how is that possible?'”

Robbie went on to say how much she loved working with Chazelle: “I felt like no one ever really put their foot to the floor—like, if I’m a car, no one actually put their foot to the floor with the gas. And he wanted that all the time, there was nothing but fifth gear with that character. He always wanted more, always. Even when we were prepping,” she said. As an example of the filmmaker’s thoroughness, she recalled working on her character Nellie’s accent. “At one point, I counted all the voice recordings I had on my phone and realised I had offered him up 51 different accents at that point. I was like, ‘Damien, you just have to pick one now, this is crazy.'” 

Robbie herself has proven her chops as an actor and a producer, but she says she’d “love” to direct at some point. “[It’s] funny, I’ve always thought of directing as a privilege, not a right. Sometimes when I hear someone be like, ‘I’m gonna direct!’ I’m like, well have you earned that yet? That’s certainly how I feel about myself,” she shared. “And the tempting thing is, every time—and I’m in this unique position where I get to work with the best directors alive today, like the directors I’ve worked with… I mean, it’s insane,” she said, citing her work not only with Chazelle but also Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. “And every time, I get this front row seat to how they do it, and it’s so tempting to keep acting because I keep getting to watch and learn from the very best. But yes, I would love to direct.”