“Don’t You Lie for a Living?”: Margot Robbie, Emma Stone and THR’s Actress Roundtable

As girls, they dreamed of growing up to perform like Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicolas Cage, Goldie Hawn — even an Ewok. As women, they have turned in some of this year’s most daring and moving performances. In November, Annette Bening (Nyad), Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon), Greta Lee (Past Lives), Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Margot Robbie (Barbie) and Emma Stone (Poor Things) gathered in Los Angeles for THR’s annual Actress Roundtable. And while they have taken on weighty work, in this conversation it became clear the industry’s leading ladies are really ready to laugh at themselves.

Do you think you’re better off in life if you were an A student or a B student? 

LILY GLADSTONE It doesn’t matter. Grading is somebody else’s metric.

MARGOT ROBBIE I feel like I learned more in lunch break. I feel like school was very informative for me — but in between classes. 

GRETA LEE Yeah, your EQ. Just figuring out what you like. 

ROBBIE Hierarchies form and crumble; it’s a lot of life lessons in the schoolyard. 

EMMA STONE (Dryly) I mean, I’m a Mensa genius. So for me, it’s gone well. 

ANNETTE BENING That’s kind of obnoxious that you talk about it. 

STONE If it’s true, you can say it. 

LEE She’s just being honest. 

STONE I’m just being honest. So anyway. But no, it sounds like you guys struggled. (Laughter.)

Annette, I heard that on Nyad, you would tease Jodie Foster right before the directors called action. Is that true? 

BENING I do goof around a lot, and it helps me relax. Some people don’t really enjoy doing that and so you have to be careful. There are some actors who are actually serious. I do do that sometimes just to keep things loose. And you go in with a lot of uncertainty and you want that, right? It’s planned uncertainty. You want to try to find something that surprises you and maybe your partner. 

Emma, Yorgos Lanthimos is known for playing games with actors in rehearsals. What kinds of games did you play on Poor Things? 

STONE I was out there about a month before we started shooting, and we did about three weeks of rehearsal. None of it is literal, you’re not blocking out the scenes or going through the lines in the way that it will happen on camera. You’re doing games where you’re all kind of tied together. True theater games. Everyone has to shut their eyes and walk around, and one person is assigned to put a chair under them as they sit. It is just completely silly. You embarrass yourself in front of each other and then you get really close, really quickly. So by the time you’re on set, you feel like you know each other really well, and you can experiment and be free and make fun of each other. And it’s no eggshell experience with your other actors, which is really, really helpful. 

GLADSTONE It’s just so validating, hearing that from both of you. I’m a goofball on set, and I tend to play really serious roles, and my foundation is in fear. So a lot of these games, it’s just refreshing. 

CAREY MULLIGAN A lot of that stuff is just feeling like, “OK, you’re not going to think I’m terrible at this.” I need to feel that with the crew as well. I need the dolly grip to think I’m not shit. It takes away the self-awareness a little bit. It should feel like summer camp. 

GLADSTONE I’ve said it to everybody that was on set, “We have no business having [this] much fun making this film.” But there were so many Native actors, and so many Native crew and extras, and when we’re together, I mean, Indians just laugh, which I think helped with sustaining some of the importance of it, because you’re surrounded by the community that’s being impacted and it makes the tragedy stronger. I mean, we’ve got that dual mask for a reason. 

ROBBIE It was not like this on Barbie. 

BENING Yeah, I’m sure you guys didn’t have any fun.

GLADSTONE Barbie was not fun at all? 

ROBBIE It was not fun. 

MULLIGAN How did you recover at the end of the day? 

ROBBIE It was harrowing. I lost myself a little bit.

BENING You were so in character that you … Did you have people call you Barbie? Off camera, I mean. 

ROBBIE The funny thing is in our script, because everyone’s Barbie and everyone’s Ken, everyone’s name is in the script. So, “Barbie Margot says to Ken Ryan.” 

MULLIGAN Isn’t it kind of amazing how it’s become a sort of sisterhood greeting now, where people you see, they’re just like, “Hey, Barbie.”

How did you think about how Barbie would physically move? 

ROBBIE I love physical comedy, and my favorite era of film is the ’30s, when it’s all head-to-toe acting. I love screwball comedies. But also, I wanted there to be an evolution between how she moved and spoke from the beginning of the film to the end of the film. You should be like, “Oh yeah, I’m looking at someone who’s being a doll.” And then by the end of it, you’re like, “I think I’m watching Margot.” I wanted to move into being a human without people realizing. And we did that in a number of ways. The wigs started off with tons of volume and hair and then got smaller, smaller, until it looked more like normal, natural hair. And the costumes, I was like, “She’s got to have very certain shapes and a lot of structure. And then by the end, the fabric should be soft. The pattern should be messy but still feminine.” Then with the physicality, I just kind of went from being very certain to uncertain, in a good way. 

Greta, how much Korean did you know when you got the part in Past Lives? 

LEE I grew up speaking Korean, but it’s like I’d forgotten that I could speak Korean because of the life that I was living in America. So right away that was something that was going to be very vulnerable for me. It’s a huge responsibility to accurately portray these certain nuances of what it’s like to have that cultural duality. Instead of a conventional dialect coach who could give me the perfect South Korean accent, I asked for this incredible woman, Sharon Choi, who you guys might know as [director] Bong Joon Ho’s translator. I needed to find someone who could help me even within one scene, the way [my character] starts out sounding after years of not speaking Korean, that she would sound kind of like a white girl. And maybe after hours of talking to her childhood sweetheart in Korean, she would sound more Korean, and what that means and showing that whole range. 

I’ve heard Greta say that growing up, she was watching characters played by Val Kilmer and Nicolas Cage, and that that’s what she envisioned for herself. Who did everybody else watch and see a version of the kind of roles they would like to play?

ROBBIE I watched a lot of Goldie Hawn films. So charming and … again, that physical comedy … 

LEE I feel compelled to explain the Val Kilmer some more. Growing up, I felt seriously competitive, but not with other women, with men. Seeing certain kinds of actors and performers like Val, like Nicolas Cage, like Jack Nicholson. These very athletic kinds of performances that as a little girl, I was jealous. I wanted that. And then later, of course, that evolved as I grew, and then I was attracted to other kinds of performances like Charlotte Rampling or Maggie Cheung. But that was how I started off because it felt like some sort of benign resistance, as a little girl to say, “No, I want that.” 

MULLIGAN I wanted to be Daniel Day-Lewis. I saw The Crucible and I was like, “I want to play his part.” That was the best part. And he was the best. 

GLADSTONE Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett. If I can diffuse the two of them into one, those are my two perfect actors. Childhood inspirations, I wanted to be an Ewok, and that’s what started all this madness. 

ROBBIE I wish I knew you as a kid. 

LEE Like a very method Ewok. 

GLADSTONE I think I can do it. 

BENING I didn’t really start until I was almost 30 to do movies. So I didn’t grow up with that mentality of thinking about it. I just couldn’t imagine it. It’s so powerful to see a great movie, loving it and thinking, “Well, I guess somebody has to be in them.” I remember having that thought, “Maybe, could it be me?” 

Emma, usually when I ask an actor about a role, it’s, “What did you have to learn or prepare?” But with Bella in Poor Things, what did you have to …

STONE Unlearn and unprepare. Because she’s in a full-grown healthy body, it’s not like you could even compare it to someone who’s been in an accident and is relearning how to walk or how to move. Looking at videos of toddlers beginning to walk, their bones are still growing and they’re still forming, so she doesn’t have that. There was nothing to compare it to. We just experimented with things, and [Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos] was like, “No, that’s insane.” She’s just my favorite character of all time because of that unlearning. She’s totally without shame. She’s pure joy and curiosity and experimentation and adventure and has no qualms about her body or her experience or food or drink or the way she relates to other people. 

ROBBIE Was there ever a part of you that was embarrassed? 

STONE I mean, similar to what you were just saying, I love physical comedy, too. Growing up for me, my heroes were Gilda Radner, Molly Shannon. I was watching SNL, so that was my pinnacle. That goofiness, or what would be embarrassment, is so freeing. I find that so much fun. And I do not take myself seriously in any way. So people laughing at something I’m attempting to do doesn’t really bother me. It’s a testament to working with a director that you truly trust and know is the captain of the ship in a way that you can really let go. We’ve probably all worked in experiences where you feel you also have to be the captain and you don’t fully trust that you can do it all or throw it all out there because you don’t know what exactly they’re seeing or how they’re going to bring it together. It’s really difficult to have to think in two minds of, “Well, if I give you this option in the take, you’re going to fucking use it.” With Yorgos, I feel whatever we try, I know he’s going to go with whatever is best for the film.  

ROBBIE And did you work with a movement coach? 

STONE No, it was just him and me. We would go have walking rehearsals for a couple of hours. And we created stages. So it was stage one to five [of the character’s development]. So we knew, “OK, we’re in stage three right now, so we’re walking this way.” You are going from a progression of the sides of the feet to walking flat. 

GLADSTONE You said walking on the sides of your feet. Did you do Suzuki method? 

STONE What is Suzuki method? 

GLADSTONE It’s kind of like martial arts training, but it’s for actors. The theory is that you have to be in such command of your instrument as an actor that you should be able to … I think he said, run toward the lip of a stage and then stop on a dime.

STONE I’m a very untrained actor. I wish I knew about that. I know about Alexander Technique. BENING Alexander is very cool. It’s about learning how to not associate tension with emotion, which is the first thing that we all do when we’re acting and learning how to stay fluid and loose while you’re also having a lot of emotion. 

Carey, as you were working on Maestro, Leonard Bernstein’s children were really involved. What kinds of things did you learn from them? 

MULLIGAN They were so unbelievably warm. We Zoomed over the years, and I started with a notebook to take down notes on. And then after a minute I thought, “Well, this is pointless because the stories were just flying” — so many amazing anecdotes and a family that you just wanted to be in. Everything was an inside joke. Everything was a secret language. And they gave me Felicia’s lighter, which is in the film. She got it when she was married. It was engraved with her name, so from when they’re married, when the film turns to color, I was using her lighter, which was amazing to have.

The first hook was the idea of two artists living concurrently together, making a life together, and one of them being literally touched by God and the other one being an artist. Steven Spielberg, who’s one of our producers, said to Bradley [Cooper] that she was more successful than Lenny when they first met. But she devoted her life to him. And Steven said of Felicia, “Lenny was her art.” 

What do you think she felt about the marriage, not only him becoming so enormous culturally but also his affairs with men? 

MULLIGAN The betrayal for her was nothing to do with sex or infidelity. It was to do with her being essentially his muse, mentor, best friend, guide, closest confidant. And the moment that he turned to somebody else for that, it’s not about anything except: What’s the point of her existence if she’s not that person anymore? 

Margot, can you take us inside the room when you were talking with Warner Bros. and Mattel as a producer on Barbie? 

ROBBIE One of the biggest fights was convincing everyone that it could be a four-quadrant movie because it had a budget that necessitated it being a four-quadrant movie. And that means getting men to go see it. Everyone’s like, “There’s just no way. Men will never, ever go to see a Barbie movie.” Men will go see a great movie. If it’s great, everyone would go see it. 

Once we had the script and were really going for it, I said, “Let’s all get comfortable with being very uncomfortable.” So every time it’s like, “Tell me your concerns. I totally hear you. I see why that is making you uncomfortable, but that’s what we’re going to do, and we’re just going to have to get comfortable with that feeling.” And it was always just like, “Just get it to the next stage. Get it to the next stage. Before you know it, we’ll be on set.” It was an amazing process, and everyone, to their credit, did get really comfortable with being uncomfortable. And Mattel’s literally a character in it.

So when you say, “OK, it’s going to be a boardroom full of men, they’re going to be having a tickle fight. This is how we’re going to show your company,” they were down with it?

ROBBIE Yeah. When you’re trying to get a project up and running, as those at the table who produce know, it’s like you’re in selling mode. I was pitching it. I was like, “When you pair Spielberg with dinosaurs, what do you get? A billion dollars. When you pair Greta and Barbie, you are going to make a billion dollars.” 

STONE You were right.

ROBBIE I was like, “God, I hope this works out. I just promised everyone a billion dollars.” You just have to double down. I think as a producer, you’ve got to make your choices and then you back that choice. I will bleed myself out before I tell a director they can’t have something they need. I’m like, “If that’s what you need for this, then let me go. I’ll make that happen.” That’s your job. So there was a lot of just completely doubling down on some crazy big, bold ideas. 

Does pitching feel like auditioning or does it feel like something different? 

ROBBIE It feels like selling. It feels like I’m a con artist convincing everyone that something insane is actually going to work. Whereas auditioning feels like … The funny thing is, I’m not good at lying. And people are like, “Don’t you lie for a living?” No, I’ve never seen acting as that. I feel like acting is making something so incredibly truthful, and making it sound like the most honest thing that could ever come out of your mouth. Whereas pitching, it’s not lying, either, but it’s a lot of promising something you don’t actually know. 

Annette, you trained for a year for Nyad, swimming five hours a day. Why did you feel that level of commitment was necessary? 

BENING When I read the script, it was just one of those parts. I just immediately said yes. Oddly enough, I didn’t really think about the swimming. And then I realized, “Wait a minute, bathing suit. I’m 60-something.” Like, “What about that?” 

ROBBIE You rock a bathing suit. 

BENING Well, it did cross my mind. I’ve always been a person who worked out, exercised for my brain as much as my bod. I was a scuba diver, and I was in the ocean a lot. I worked on a boat. But I had never been a swimmer-swimmer. I thought, “I have a pool, and I’m just going to jump in. How hard can it be?” I was really naive. I started on my own, and it was overwhelming. I thought, “What have I done? Wait a minute, I’ve agreed to this. Can I do this?” You have to face your fears, in a way. And so I hired a great coach, an Olympian swimmer named Rada Owen. And of course what happens with swimming is that you start to fall in love with it because it makes you feel so good. It’s so good for the central nervous system. I have a very active mind, and a lot of exercise has always been for me to try to calm my mind. So I began to feel the benefits physically as well as emotionally. Then we started talking about Diana: What is her stroke like? I had to learn to breathe on the left because she breathes on the left. The boat has to be here. Jodie’s there playing Bonnie, my coach in the movie, and so we started working on that. I just worked really, really hard. And the more I got into it, the more I enjoyed it.  

How would you describe your job to a 5-year-old? 

BENING Playing pretend. It is a grown-up version of that. And we do have to maintain that — that whole thing of having a childlike sense of the world. There’s always a point in which you started and you just never know, “Well, will I get jobs? Will people want to hire me?” Everybody starts there. I still feel very much in touch with that. Even coming today, it’s like that first read-through feeling of that butterfly, that excitement. 

LEE I lie to them. I have two children who are 7 and 4. I tell them it’s the most important job in the world. There’s doctor and there’s me. No, I think, and this is something that becomes more true, just aging and wanting to appreciate the burning desire, the love of something. Specifically telling my kids I love this. And for them to get to see it has been really just wonderful and sometimes very difficult. Because they don’t understand all of it. And sometimes it is hard to put into words. So sometimes then you lie. 

What’s it like when your parents see your performance? 

MULLIGAN My parents came to see Maestro at the London Film Festival with my brother and my sister-in-law, and we’re all on a WhatsApp chain. And I came into London. I was waiting at a restaurant for the film to finish and I said, “I’ve got the table, I’ll order some food.” I’m waiting, waiting. And the film has ended. Suddenly, my phone lights up and it’s the family WhatsApp group. And I’m like, “Oh!” My sister-in-law just says, “Owen” — my brother — “wants the steak frites.” And I was like, “Oh, OK, cool.” We’re English. 

LEE They sound Korean to me. My parents, they’re normally very stoic, or just they’ve seen the things that I’ve done, but it’s never really been part of our relationship to be overly celebratory. But my mom went to see Past Lives and afterwards she was sobbing, and I don’t even know if I’ve seen her cry before. She was a wreck. It was a premiere, I didn’t feel like we could really get into it. Several days passed, and she called me and said, “I’m driving. I’m still crying.” I was like, “My God. What’s wrong? Is everything OK?” And she said, “I’m Nora.” 

STONE Oh my God. 

LEE And I was like, “What?” And in her way, she said, “You think this movie is about you, it’s about me.” But behind that was a real sense of seeing herself that I really did not expect. And now, I feel like I know her in a different way.

GLADSTONE It’s a gift to take your mom on an emotional journey like that, through your work. My dad has just always put it in my head that this is what I was going to do. That was really important because you grow up in rural Montana on a reservation, it’s like the world is telling you, “It’s impossible for you.” It just never was. My dad, in a way of not giving me critiques but also giving me praise, he says, “That film was so profound yet very simple.” He will pick the two contradicting phrases and say both. 

BENING That’s beautiful. 

GLADSTONE I mean, it is, but it’s also him just being like he doesn’t know what the fuck the movie is about. 

LEE Covering his bases.

ROBBIE So your parents, they’re film people enough that they could appreciate it was a Scorsese film? I remember telling my family, I’m like, “It’s Scorsese.” And they were like, “Huh?” Were your family like, “You’re doing a Scorsese!?”

GLADSTONE Yeah. My dad’s favorite movie is Kundun. That was my introduction to Marty. I had no idea about Goodfellas. My grandma was born and raised in a little log cabin during the Depression, on the Nez Perce reservation in Lapwai. But she loved movies. Her hobby was going and buying VHSes. She had about 4,000 titles of films that she was recording constantly. She’s passed away, but she was around when we told her that I’d gotten cast in this. We told her, “Yeah, I’m going to be in a Martin Scorsese film.” (Imitating her grandmother) “Ooh, Martin Scorsese!” “And Robert De Niro.” “Ooh, Robert De Niro!” “And Leonardo DiCaprio.” “… Who?” Then I pulled Titanic out of her collection. “Ooh!” And it was sweet because, one of the gifts of dementia was getting to surprise her with that information several times a day, and it was always fresh and exciting. Always the same reaction. 

LEE Can I ask something? Now that we’re all best friends, I’m so curious to know what you guys think about comedy and drama, if you approach them differently. 

GLADSTONE Comedy is harder, right? 

ROBBIE I do think comedy’s harder than drama. I feel less scared that I’m going to pull off a big screaming, crying scene than I’m going to pull off a funny scene. I know I can scream and shout and cry and do all that stuff, but can I make people laugh? I don’t know. But I think it requires the same level of commitment, that it’s all-in. Because if you take even an inch off the pedal there, it’s going to fall flat on its face.

If you were a Taylor Swift era, which era would you be?

MULLIGAN What does that mean? 

STONE She’s never heard of her.  

MULLIGAN Is an era an album? I’d be Folklore. My husband [Marcus Mumford] sings on Folklore. And it’s lovely. “Cowboy Like Me.” 

STONE I want to choose Folklore because your husband sings on it.   

Emma, is the Swift song “When Emma Falls in Love” about you? 

STONE You’ll have to ask her.

What is the most used emoji on your phone? 

LEE I think mine’s the brain explosion one. 

STONE Mine’s the melting smiley. It’s really helpful. 

ROBBIE And the smiley with the sunnies. 

This story first appeared in the Jan. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.