Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros
The Wolf of Wall Street was arguably the role that put Margot Robbie on the map as a new major movie star and she made sure her performance was as true to life as possible.
In the movie, Robbie plays Naomi, the second wife of swindling stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), who he cheats on his first wife (Cristin Milioti) with.
While they first meet at a party at Belfort’s house, they later go for dinner together where Naomi tells Jordan they’re not going to be friends.
They then head off to her place to continue not being friends, with Naomi inviting him up for some tea, although it’s obviously not really about the tea.
Just as he’s debating whether to stick around and thinking he should go home to his wife she opens the door and stands there fully naked, and the fully nude part of the scene was something Robbie insisted upon.
Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street. Credit: Paramount Pictures
Speaking to The Telegraph shortly after the movie was released, she explained why she wanted to play the scene that way, even after director Martin Scorsese suggested she could wear something if she was uncomfortable.
She said: “I think nudity for the sake of nudity is shameful. If they’ve put it in just so that a girl gets her top off, then that’s disgusting. And you can always tell.
“But I also think it’s disgusting when someone would have got naked in real life, in the film they conveniently leave their bra on, or hold up the bed sheet. Seeing someone being choreographed into being covered up irritates me just as much.
“The whole point of Naomi is that her body is her only form of currency in this world.
“So when Marty [Scorsese] was trying to help me out, and said in the scene where she seduces Jordan perhaps I could have a robe on, I said she wouldn’t.
“She has to be naked. She’s laying her cards on the table.”
Margot Robbie insisted she do the scene how she felt it ought to go. Credit: David M. Benett / Contributor/Getty
Robbie said she was apprehensive about doing the nude scene as it would end up on the internet pretty much forever.
However, she chose to play it the way she thought was best as it would be the thing most true to the character.
In a later interview the movie star said that shooting scenes that looked pretty racy on the big screen were actually done in ‘a tiny bedroom with 30 crew crammed in’.
She said it was ‘a very weird thing’ being in a small room with a bunch of men for 17 hours to shoot the scene but explained that ‘you have to bury the embarrassment and absurdity, really deep, and fully commit’.
For her performance in Wolf of Wall Street she was named ‘best newcomer’ by Empire Awards and, as we all know, her career has taken off massively since then.
