‘Babylon’: Margot Robbie Was Blown Away by 1 of Diego Calva’s ‘Brilliant’ Talents
Damien Chazelle’s Babylon brings together an impressive cast of stars, including Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, and Brad Pitt. However, this 3-hour long epic asked a lot of its performers, challenging them on multiple levels. Robbie revealed in an interview for Babylon that she was immensely impressed with one of Calva’s talents that came out in full force.
‘Babylon’ pairs up Margot Robbie and Diego Calva in Hollywood
Babylon marks Chazelle’s first feature film since 2016’s critically acclaimed La La Land. It follows several perspectives in the Hollywood land of excess in the late 1920s right before the outbreak of “talkies,” or sound in film. Jack Conrad (Pitt) is a silent film star who begins to feel the strain of sound in cinema. Meanwhile, Nellie LaRoy (Robbie) is an aspiring actor with dreams of seeing herself on the silver screen. Similarly, Manny (Calva) is a film assistant who doesn’t see himself anywhere outside of the movie business.
They each face the resulting shakeup after sound became intertwined with images on the silver screen. Babylon finds Robbie’s Nellie and Calva’s Manny sharing their aspirations to be a part of something bigger. However, they have to be careful of the Hollywood machine and all that comes with fame and glory.
Margot Robbie was blown away by Diego Calva’s comedic timing in a second language
In an interview with Screen Rant, Robbie, Calva, and Pitt talked about their experience working on Babylon. The interviewer pointed out that Calva impressively worked with Chazelle to rework large portions of the script, especially when it came to crafting Manny.
“I mean, it was the greatest experience in my life; but also, I had to learn English,” Calva responded. “That was hard, because sometimes I had ideas, you know, for lines and things like that, and I wasn’t fast enough to translate myself into English.”
Robbie chimed in: “It’s hard to improvise on the spot, take and take again. I was never less than awestruck that Diego could do it in a second language, and he would be funny and witty. (To Diego) You had comedic timing, you’d come up with the most brilliant things in the moment in your second language. I mean, it’s crazy.”
“And that’s because Damien gave me a lot of preparation,” Calva said. “For me, this was like an eight-month project. He flew me here, and I worked with a dialect coach. That was probably my first challenge during Babylon: how to talk in another language.”
She went ‘extreme’ in this movie
However, Babylon also required a lot from Robbie when it came to crafting her character. Screen Rant explained that it “seems” like she always gives so much to each role, to which Pitt interjected “She does. it doesn’t seem. She does.” Pitt and Robbie previously starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood together.
Robbie said that she “loved” having the opportunity to go “extreme” in this portrayal of Nellie. The character is fictional, but there are clear influences that went into the character, including Clara Bow.
“That’s true to who she is,” Robbie said. “She would never not give 150% with everything, good and bad. If she’s mad, she’s really mad, and if she’s happy, she’s really happy. But you know, it didn’t ever feel forced with Nelly because Nelly is that big, and her reactions are extreme every single time. Totally disproportionate to the situation most of the time, but I kind of love that. I get a real kick out of that. It’s an adrenaline rush.”
