In January of this year, while filming I, Tonya, Sebastian Stan dropped into a bar to meet up with a bunch of his Marvel co-stars in Atlanta. These are people heâs known since at least 2010, when he was cast as Bucky Barnes in Captain America: The First Avenger, a film that propelled one of the biggest movie franchises in modern history and Stanâs own career. Since that first Captain America film, heâs repeated the role in its two sequels; heâs also slated to appear in the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War, which began filming earlier this year. Heâs pretty good friends with some of the most recognizable superhero movie stars on the planet. Theyâre his people.
But when he walked into the middle of the bar, no one knew who the hell he was.
âI went and stood in the center of where everyone was hanging out and I realized that no one recognized me,â Stan says. âI had this haircut that was really high, a mustache and no sideburns, and I was very pale. I stood there for a minute before I went up to someone and was like, âHey, itâs me.ââ
You canât really blame them, either. In I, Tonya, Stan looks almost nothing like the rugged and brooding Bucky Barnes. He transforms into the slimy Jeff Gillooly, Tonya Hardingâs estranged husband and a figure skating villain who served time in prison for his involvement in the infamous attack on Nancy Kerrigan ahead of the 1994 Winter Olympics. Along with the short hair and mustache, Stan assumes Gilloolyâs meek-until-explosive temperament and his soft, delicate voice. Itâs a chilling likeness to the man who helped destroy the career of one of the greatest figure skaters of all timeâbut allowed her to take most of the publicâs blame.
In fact, if I hadnât known it was Stan playing Gillooly, I might not have even recognized the world-famous Marvel actorâa confession heâs glad to hear.
âYouâre always hoping to disappear in something,â Stan says, accepting the compliment. In order to dive deep into the character, he spent a month and a half listening to interviews with Jeff Gillooly. He also watched any footage he could find, and he eventually traveled to Portland, Oregon, where he spent three hours chatting with Gilloolyâwho changed his name to Jeff Stoneâat a nice Mexican restaurant in town.
Stan admits he was nervous to meet the almost-forgotten Gillooly; one might imagine Jeff Stone might have had the same trepidation. âAt that point, the only thing I really cared about was physicality, mannerisms, anything that I could see that I picked up from him,â Stan says. âThe first thing he asked me was, âWhy would anyone want to do this? Why would anyone want to see this movie? Why did you decide that you want to be in this movie?â My impression was that it must be very strange for him to want to revisit that story. I donât think itâs anything that he wants to talk about.â
Yet the Tonya Harding saga, all these years later, is still something a lot of people really do want to talk about. I, Tonya, which takes a surprisingly comic approach to the figure skaterâs life story, is framed by interviews with its leading players. Presented as talking heads in a faux-documentary, Margot Robbieâs Harding, Stanâs Gillooly, and Allison Janneyâs LaVona Fay Golden (Hardingâs mother) take turns narrating the larger story of Hardingâs rise and fallâand then another rise and fallâin competitive figure skating, culminating in Hardingâs ultimately disappointing performance in Lillehammer and her ban from the United States Figure Skating Association.
This Rashomon-style take on a salacious tabloid story attempts to show that, beyond the media frenzy that abused Hardingâs image and laid the groundwork for what became our exhausting and overwhelming 24-hour news cycle, the story of the events are still somewhat complicated. âThereâs no such thing as truth. I mean, Itâs bullshit,â Robbieâs Harding says in the film. The unreliable narrators only reiterate that theme, with conflicting accounts of the attack on Kerrigan, the abuse Harding suffered from her mother and her husband, and the subjectivity with which Hardingâs many judges viewed her athleticism and class standing. Continue reading