Margot Robbie baffled over ‘Babylon’ bomb: ‘How is that possible?’

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Margot Robbie is still puzzled as to why audiences hated Babylon.

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Released at Christmastime in 20222, the three-hour ode to old Hollywood cast Robbie as rising star Nellie LaRoy in a story that took place in the 1920s as the motion picture industry shifted from silent film to talkies.

Directed by Oscar-winning La La Land filmmaker Damien Chazelle, Babylon co-starred Brad Pitt and Diego Calva and was pegged to be a big contender heading into awards season.

But with a pricey budget, rumoured to be in the neighbourhood of $80 million, it ended up as one of that year’s biggest box office bombs, earning just $63 million worldwide.

In a new interview with the Talking Pictures podcast, Robbie says she’s still wondering what went wrong after host Ben Mankiewicz said he was confused why audiences didn’t flock to see it in theatres.

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“I love it. I don’t get it either. I know I am biased because I am very close to the project and I obviously believe in it, but I still can’t figure out why people hated it. I wonder if in 20 years people are going to be like, ‘Wait, Babylon didn’t do well at the time?’ Like when you hear that Shawshank Redemption was a failure at the time and you’re like like, ‘How is that possible?’” she said.

Coming off his critically acclaimed 2018 space drama First Man, Robbie recalled that Chazelle really made an effort to craft a film that would stand the test of time.

“When we were trying to figure out what the accent should be for that character, I gave him 51 different versions of an accent,” the Oscar nominee said. “It was like doing a one woman show. We started off with like Boston. Nellie is from Boston. Here’s what she sounds like if she’s from Arkansas. Then I got specific. Here is Nellie if she was a mixture of Snookie from the Jersey Shore and Joe Pesci. Now I’m going to be a little bit of Fran Drescher mixed with Snookie. This is how specific we got. At one point I counted all the voice things I offered him at that point and it was 51.”

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Robbie went on to praise his “thorough” filmmaking style.

“Do you know what I loved so much about working with him? I felt like no one had really put their foot to the floor with the gas, but he wanted that all the time. He wanted more always. Even when we were prepping,” she said.

Both critics and audiences were unmoved by Chazelle’s tale of outrageous excess, panning the movie on Rotten Tomatoes, where it has a 52% approval rating from audiences.

But in a 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Chazelle said the dialogue that emerged around the film’s failure was “good” for moviemakers.

“It’s good to have something that stimulates conversation and debate and a lot of fierce opinions on either side. We all knew the movie was gonna ruffle some feathers and get some people mad, and I think that’s good. More movies should do that,” he said.

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Still, he acknowledged that Babylon was such a dismal failure that he wasn’t sure how he was going to secure financing for his next movie.

“I’m in a sort of trepidatious state of mind, but I have no illusions,” the director said during an appearance last year on the Talking Pictures podcast (via World of Reel). “I won’t get a budget of Babylon size any time soon, or at least not on this next one. Certainly, in financial terms, Babylon didn’t work at all. You try to not have that effect on what you’re doing creatively, but, at some level, it can’t help but affect it. But maybe that’s okay? I have a very mixed mind about it. Who knows. Maybe I won’t be able to get (the next) one made. I have no idea. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Despite Babylon bombing at the box office, Robbie emerged from the cinematic fiasco unscathed. She went on to star and produce last year’s Barbie movie, which was a worldwide success with over $1 billion in ticket sales.

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