Margot Robbie has addressed her controversial unscripted kiss with Babylon co-star Brad Pitt.
“We all established our boundaries before making this movie, because it’s a movie that really pushes boundaries in a lot of ways,” she told Entertainment Tonight at the film’s premiere last week. “We’re all good.”
The Australian actor, who is married to British producer Tom Ackerley, attracted some criticism earlier this month after she revealed she improvised her kiss with her co-star.
“That wasn’t in the script,” she told E! News. “But I thought, ‘When else am I gonna get the chance to kiss Brad Pitt? I’m just gonna go for it.’”
In the comedy-drama, Robbie stars as Nellie, an actor trying to make it in 1920s Hollywood, while Pitt co-stars as veteran actor Jack Conrad.
“I said, ‘Damien, I think Nellie would just go up and kiss Jack,’” Robbie told E! News, recalling a conversation with director Damien Chazelle. “And Damien was like, ‘Well, she could—wait, hold on. You just wanna kiss Brad Pitt.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, so sue me. This opportunity might never come up again.’ And he was like, ‘It does work for the character,’ and I was like, ‘I think so.’”
Ultimately, Chazelle felt the kiss “really works,” and wanted to shoot another take and include it in the film, Robbie said.
But some social media users took issue with Robbie’s blasé comments, suggesting her actions were inappropriate and that there would have been a different reaction had the roles been reversed. Others felt Robbie’s comments were in poor taste, given abuse allegations against Pitt from his ex-wife Angelina Jolie.
Asked at the “Babylon” premiere about how “Margot snuck in a kiss,” Pitt told ET “there’s always room for character interpretation.”
“Believe me, that’s the tamest thing she does in this,” he added. “She’s on fire on this. It’s the best I’ve ever seen her.”
In the wake of sexual misconduct allegations that ignited the Me Too movement and Hollywood’s ongoing reckoning with abuse, film sets have made changes to the way actors shoot intimate scenes while navigating consent and boundaries. Many productions now employ intimacy coordinators to help protect and safely guide actors through this type of work.