Margot Robbieis back to playing real-life people in her latest film,Mary Queen of Scots.
The actress, 28, earned her first Oscar nomination in 2017 for her performance as Tonya Harding inI, Tonya. She’s back in contention this year for embodyingQueen ElizabethI oppositeSaoirse Ronanas Mary Stuart in the drama, fromHouse of Cardswriter Beau Willimon.
In a scene from director Josie Rourke’s film, exclusive to PEOPLE, Robbie stars as a young Elizabeth, urging her suitor for many years, Robert Dudley (Joe Alwyn), to pursue Mary, who has returned to Scotland to claim her throne.
“Do not ask this of me,” Dudley pleads with Elizabeth.
“If you wed her, she is ours,” Elizabeth says. “Marry the beautiful queen of Scots and we can control her. With Mary, you too can become prince.”
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“I’d say, ‘Hey, how’s your weekend?’ But they wouldn’t even get close to me,” Robbie, 28, recalls of trying to chat with people while covered with scars and thick white makeup. “It was very alienating. And I felt very lonely. It was an interesting social experiment.”
Robbie says had to wear layers of prosthetics and makeup to transform into Elizabeth, who often sported the heavy white makeup to cover the scars on her face for the small pox. It made her completely unrecognizable in the role, stripping away the Australian beauty’s distinctive features and glowing blonde hair.
Margot Robbie inMary Queen of Scots.Parisa Tag/Focus Features
“Normally there’s someone who steps in and says, ‘No, keep all the girls looking pretty!’” she says of her experience on movie sets. “But Josie Rourke, the director, was keen to explore howQueen Elizabeth’s looks affected her relationships.”
Of the relationships Elizabeth had, Robbie toldEntertainment Weeklyearlier this year that her rivalry with Queen Mary of Scotland was born out of manipulation from outside sources. The film deals entirely with their fraught communications.
“Everyone manipulated their relationship,” Robbie toldEWof Mary and Elizabeth. “It’s complicated, it’s tragic, and it’s bizarre. Theonlyother person in the world who could understand the position they were in was each other.”
Mary Queen of Scotshits theaters Dec. 7.
source: people.com
