Margot Robbie says full frontal scene in The Wolf of Wall Street was her idea

Margot Robbie made quite the impression with her breakout role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which included a full frontal nude scene. While speaking with Ben Mankiewicz on the Talking Pictures podcast, the actress revealed that this scene was actually her idea, although she wasn’t thinking about how “everyone is going to see this” at the time.

“[Scorsese] said, ‘Maybe you can be wearing a robe if you’re not comfortable.’ But that’s not what she would do in that scene,” Robbie said. “The whole point is that she’s going to come out completely naked—that’s the card she’s playing right now.“

The actress also explained how she stood out during her audition for the role — by slapping Leonardo DiCaprio. The scene which she was reading called for their characters to kiss, but Robbie had another idea. “I thought, ‘I could kiss Leonardo DiCaprio right now, and that would be awesome. I can’t wait to tell all of my friends this,’” Robbie said. “And then I thought nah. And just walloped him in the face. It was dead silent for what felt like an eternity but was probably three seconds.“

Robbie continued, “They just burst out laughing. Leo and Marty were laughing so hard. They said, ‘That was great.’ I was thinking, ‘I’m going to get arrested, I’m pretty sure that’s assault or battery. Not only will you never work again, actually you will go to jail for this, you idiot.’ And also ‘why did you have to hit him so hard? You should have done it lighter.’“

After the success of The Wolf of Wall Street, Robbie’s career exploded with roles in movies such as Suicide Squad, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and, of course, Barbie. However, not every film can be a winner, and one of Robbie’s more recent movies premiered to a very mixed reaction, which Robbie is still confused by. Damien Chazelle’s Babylon depicted the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood. “I still can’t figure out why people really hated it,” Robbie said. “I wonder if in 20 years people are going to be like, ‘Wait, Babylon didn’t do well at the time? That’s crazy.’ When you hear something like, [The] Shawshank Redemption was a failure at the time, or whatever it is, and you’re like, ‘Oh, how is that possible?’“