Margot Robbie has opened up about her controversial unscripted kiss with ‘Babylon’ co-star Brad Pitt.
“We all set our boundaries before we made this movie, because it’s a movie that really pushes boundaries in so many ways,” he told Entertainment Tonight at the film’s premiere last week. “We’re all fine.”
The Australian actor, who is married to British producer Tom Ackerley, attracted a bit of talk earlier this month after he revealed he improvised his kiss with his co-stars.
“It wasn’t in the script,” she told E! News. “But I thought, ‘When am I going to be able to kiss Brad Pitt again?’ I will try.'”
In the comedy-drama, Robbie plays Nellie, an actress trying to make it big in 1920s Hollywood, while Pitt plays veteran actor Jack Conrad.
“I said, ‘Damien, I think Nellie would go kiss Jack,'” Robbie told E! News, recalling a conversation with director Damien Chazelle. “And Damien said, ‘Well, he could…wait, stay.’ You just want to kiss Brad Pitt. And I said, “Oh, sue me. This opportunity may never come again. And he said, “It works for the character,” and I said, “I think so.”
Ultimately, Chazelle felt the kiss “really worked” and wanted to shoot one more take and include it in the film, Robbie said.
But some social media users took issue with Robbie’s cheeky comments, suggesting his actions were inappropriate and that there would have been a different reaction if the roles had been reversed. Others found Robbie’s comments in poor taste, given his ex-wife Angelina Jolie’s allegations of abuse against Pitt.
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Asked at the “Babylon” premiere about how “Margot snuck in a kiss,” Pitt told ET “there’s always room for character play.”
“Believe me, that’s the kindest thing he does in this,” she added. “He’s on fire for it. It’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
In the wake of allegations of sexual misconduct that sparked the Me Too movement and Hollywood’s ongoing reckoning with abuse, film sets have brought changes to how actors film intimate scenes while navigating consent and boundaries. Many productions now employ privacy coordinators to help protect and guide actors safely through this type of work.
