Babylon actress and producer Olivia Hamilton has spilled the beans on the ‘raucous’ scene she shared with Margot Robbie that went a bit off-script as the cast really enjoyed getting into the swing of things.
The attention-grabbing film, directed by Hamilton’s husband Damien Chazelle, charts the uneasy transition to ‘talking pictures’ from silent movies in Hollywood in the late 1920s.
One of the characters wrapped up in this innovation is ambitious starlet Nellie LaRoy (Robbie), who gets her first break in a silent short being directed by Hamilton’s character, Ruth Adler.
Later in the film, the pair try to tackle shooting with sound but are distracted by all sorts of issues among the team during multiple takes – from non-rubber-soled shoes to ticking watches – before tensions come to a head.
Recalling the filming of that scene, Hamilton told Metro.co.uk at the Babylon UK premiere: ‘It was fun and intense, but mostly fun. I mean, we did a lot of things that weren’t even in the script that do end up on the screen.’
‘There was one moment where it was getting very raucous and some fake punches were thrown, but not planned, and I think I called to my PA character and I was like, “Bring your…” It was just crazy, and everyone was improvising and having a lot of fun actually,’ she revealed.
‘So even though we look like we’re suffering, I think that was a very enjoyable scene to film.’
Although a female director might seem unexpected in the Hollywood of almost 100 years ago, there were actually several who were enjoying success around the world at that time, the most prominent of which in the US was Dorothy Arzner.
Her most prominent films include directing Katharine Hepburn in Christopher Strong, and The Wild Party with ‘It Girl’ Clara Bow in her first talking role.
Discussing her take on Ruth, Hamilton explained: ‘I read books about all the great directors at that time who were women, Dorothy Arzner [for example], and pulled little bits of their backstory.
‘Obviously, they had to work for it, it wasn’t like being a woman you just got handed things, but what I found really interesting in a lot of their stories was that their careers weren’t about being a woman, they just were women, and so I tried to bring that to Ruth.’
‘It’s never commented on that she’s a woman and she’s as misogynistic as all the men, and so I thought that was really interesting,’ Hamilton pointed out.
The star channelled her role in another way outside of her performance, as a producer on the Hollywood ensemble period piece, which also features Brad Pitt, Jean Smart, Diego Calva, Tobey Maguire, Li Jun Li and Jovan Adepo.
The First Man actress, who appeared in Chazelle’s Oscar-winning 2016 movie La La Land too, received her first producer credit on a feature film for Babylon.
‘Producing was my first my first role and then Damien said he wanted me to play Ruth, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I can do both, and I don’t know if I can do this character!” – but I’m glad that I did,’ she said.
Babylon is out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 20.
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