I, Tonya is a 2017 biographical comedy-drama sports film directed by Craig Gillespie and written by Steven Rogers. It follows the life and career of American figure skater Tonya Harding and her connection to the 1994 assault on her rival Nancy Kerrigan. The film states it is based on "contradictory" and "totally true" interviews with Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, suggesting they are unreliable narrators. It features darkly comedic interviews with the characters, set in the modern day, and breaks the fourth wall. Margot Robbie (who also produced) stars as Harding, Sebastian Stan as Gillooly, and Allison Janney as Harding's mother LaVona Golden. Julianne Nicholson, Caitlin Carver, Paul Walter Hauser, and Bobby Cannavale also star.
Loosely based on actual events, the film depicts Harding as a victim, reframing the narrative around her implication in the aftermath of the crime and other criticism of her actions. I, Tonya premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, and was released theatrically in the United States on December 8, 2017, by Neon and 30West. It grossed $67 million worldwide on an $6 million budget, and received highly positive reviews from critics, who particularly praised the performances of Robbie, Stan, and Janney.
At the 90th Academy Awards, Janney won for Best Supporting Actress, while the film also earned nominations for Best Actress for Robbie and Best Film Editing. It earned three nominations at the 75th Golden Globe Awards, winning Best Supporting Actress for Janney, who also won at the Screen Actors Guild and Critics' Choice Movie Awards. Robbie herself was nominated for Best Actress at both shows. At the 71st British Academy Film Awards, the film earned five nominations, winning Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Janney.
Plot In Portland, Oregon in the 1970s, a four-year-old Tonya Harding is forced to ice skate by her physically abusive mother, LaVona Golden. Tonya's parents eventually take her out of school to focus on her skating career as she trains under coach Diane Rawlinson. Tonya's father leaves the family home. Tonya rapidly becomes one of the best figure skaters in the United States, but is held back by her "white trash" reputation, homemade costumes, and unconventional choice of performance music (e.g., ZZ Top). At 15, she begins dating 18-year-old Jeff Gillooly. They marry, but Jeff becomes abusive. When LaVona scorns Tonya for putting up with it, Tonya blames LaVona for raising her badly.
After a dispute with Diane, Tonya fires her and hires Dody Teachman as her new coach. Tonya becomes the first American female figure skater to complete two triple Axel jumps in competition. At the 1992 Winter Olympics, Tonya fails to stick her landings and finishes fourth. Defeated, she takes a job as a waitress, but Diane convinces her to train for the 1994 Winter Olympics. She performs well but still feels she is being underscored. She confronts a judge about her scores, and he explains that Tonya's image is not wholesome enough. Tonya approaches her mother for help, but is scolded and rebuffed, leading Tonya to reluctantly ask Jeff for support. On the day of her November 1993 competition at the Northwest Pacific Regional Championships in Portland, Tonya receives a death threat and chooses not to compete. Realizing that he can sabotage Tonya's competition, Jeff instructs his friend Shawn Eckardt to send death threats to Tonya's rival, Nancy Kerrigan. Tonya makes a phone call trying to locate Nancy's training arena and her practice times. The idea of injuring Nancy to prevent her from competing is floated around by Tonya and Jeff, leading to Shawn hiring two henchmen to injure Nancy after a practice session in Detroit in January 1994. Shawn's henchman Shane Stant strikes Nancy's knee with a police baton, leaving her unable to compete at the next day's National competition. The hired henchmen are arrested.
Shawn's bragging quickly leads the FBI to him. He blames Jeff, who is horrified to learn that Shawn himself was behind Tonya's death threat to get hired as her bodyguard. Tonya qualifies for the Olympic team but realizes she will be found guilty by association. She goes to the FBI and reports what Jeff and Shawn did, but they show her interview transcript to Jeff after his surrender, and he races home to confront her. She briefly speaks to Jeff from behind a locked door, then climbs out the window, leaving him for good. Jeff later implicates Tonya by saying she knew beforehand about the attack.
LaVona visits Tonya and offers her kind words; however, when she asks if Tonya had prior knowledge of the attack, Tonya realizes that LaVona is wearing a wire and throws her out. Jeff, Shawn, and the henchmen are charged, and Tonya's hearing is postponed until after the Olympics. Tonya finishes eighth while Nancy wins the silver medal. Tonya avoids jail but is banned from competitive figure-skating for life. Heartbroken, she begs the judge to give her jail time instead of taking away her livelihood, but the decision stands.
Jeff acknowledges that he ruined Tonya's life and career. He changes his name, opens a hair salon, divorces Tonya, and remarries. LaVona moves to Washington and has no contact with Tonya. Tonya remarries, divorces, takes up professional boxing, then works as a landscaper, house painter, and deck builder. She since lives happily with her third husband and their seven-year-old son. Text at the end states that Tonya wants people to know that she is a good mother.
Cast
Production Development Screenwriter Steven Rogers was inspired to write I, Tonya after watching a documentary on figure skating which mentioned Tonya Harding. Rogers arranged separate interviews with Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly; each remembered the events of the 1994 scandal very differently. Rogers decided, "Well, that's my way in - to put everyone's point of view out there, and then let the audience decide." He later said that the film was really about "things we tell ourselves in order to...live with ourselves...how we change the narrative, and then want that to be the narrative."
Regarding Gillooly, Rogers stated, "What's curious about Jeff is that he refused to take any money for life rights, for his interview, for anything." He remembered Jeff Gillooly saying that Harding was a great figure skater. According to Rogers, Gillooly also said that it was his own idea to threaten Nancy Kerrigan's ability to perform and took responsibility for his part in Harding's 1994 ruin: "he doesn't want to profit from it."
Margot Robbie, who played Harding and co-produced the film, did not realize the screenplay was based on a real event until after she finished reading it. Immediately prior to filming, Robbie flew from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon to meet Harding. To prepare for the skating scenes, Robbie trained for four months. Heidi Munger and Anna Malkova served as skating doubles and Sarah Kawahara provided coaching and choreography. The production was unable to find a skating double who could perform a triple Axel, which was accomplished by visual effects.
Rogers wrote the role of Tonya's mother LaVona for Allison Janney; she is a longtime friend of Rogers, but the "stars had [not] aligned" for them to work together until he completed the script for I, Tonya. Janney said the part was one of the most challenging of her career. Shortly after the premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, she said, "I think LaVona was actually a very smart woman, very articulate[...] She was not messing around and didn't want [Tonya] distracted[...] She wanted [Tonya] to know that it was going to be hard work, and knowing her daughter needed to be told she couldn't do it in order to do it was LaVona's way of saying, 'I was there to inspire her'."
Director Craig Gillespie was interested in the project because he "realized it was a great opportunity to revisit the story and make a commentary about how the media treats people." He added that he didn't "feel great about having to drag Nancy's name back into this." Gillespie said that he tried to present Harding "in a very honest way" without "trying to pull those heartstrings... just showing you why she is the way she is."
Filming Principal photography began in late January 2017 in Macon, Georgia, where Macon Coliseum was used as a set. Throughout the shoot, Robbie suffered from a herniated disc in her neck and had routine MRIs to ensure it was safe for her to continue filming skating scenes. Filming wrapped in late February of that year, with pickups in Atlanta on May 16. In an interview, Margot Robbie highlighted that she and Tom Ackerley had to postpone their honeymoon for the production of I, Tonya.
Music
Some of the songs featured in I, Tonya had been used in Harding's real-life routines, such as ZZ Top's "Sleeping Bag". Others were selected by music supervisor Susan Jacobs: tracks from 1970s such as Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" or Supertramp's "Goodbye Stranger" came from an era when music was "warm", "powerful and full." Jacobs felt the "classic rock songs filled the picture without getting in the way of the story." Critic Emily Manning found that others, such as En Vogue's "Free Your Mind" and Heart's "Barracuda", created "an interesting parallel between Tonya's tenacity and ambition." The film ends with Siouxsie and the Banshees' cover of "The Passenger"; Manning wrote: "There was something really right about seeing Tonya skate to Siouxsie." Jacobs said that "The Passenger" was "something obviously female and the lyrics [resonated]". The lyrics of Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet" were also important as "they felt like the story".
A soundtrack was released on December 8, 2017, by Milan Records, featuring songs used in the film by various artists and tracks from the original score.
Although he was not commissioned to write a song for the film, Sufjan Stevens sent his song "Tonya Harding" (2017) to Jacobs, but it was turned down because no way could be found for it to be used in the film.
Release
Shortly before production on the film began, Miramax acquired U.S., Eastern European, Russian and Greek distribution rights to I, Tonya for $6 million and helped complete the film. Before the film's premiere, its distribution rights Miramax held were back on the market, with the company still attached to the film. I, Tonya premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2017. A bidding war ensued for the domestic distribution rights to the film, with Netflix, Entertainment Studios, Annapurna Pictures, CBS Films and Aviron Pictures being some companies bidding for the film. Neon and 30West acquired domestic distribution rights to the film for $5 million. It was theatrically released on December 8, 2017.
In January 2018, Dan Shaughnessy, columnist for The Boston Globe, asked Nancy Kerrigan in a telephone interview if she had seen the film – she had not. When Shaughnessy posited that Kerrigan was once "a victim of Harding's dysfunctional life", she agreed but emphasized that she was occupied with living her own life. Shaughnessy also asked Kerrigan to comment on whether she was "bothered by Hollywood's portrayal of Tonya"; she replied that the issue was no longer her business. Nancy Kerrigan said that her only "role" in the 1994 scandal was recovering from an attack, "That's it", she finished. She went on, during the interview, to speak about how she remembered the scandal as "A bizarre thing. The whole thing was crazy, being that it's a story. I mean, come on."
Home media The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 13, 2018.
Reception Box office I, Tonya has grossed $30 million in the United States and Canada, and $23.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $53.9 million.