If you've seen I, Tonya, you might wonder how on earth figure-skating newbie Margot Robbie transformed into infamous Olympian and world champion Tonya Harding. Not only does Robbie's Oscar-nominated performance bring a version of Harding to life on screen, but she skates like Harding, too.
Sarah Kawahara is the woman who taught Margot Robbie how to emulate Harding on the ice. We spoke to the choreographer about the grueling training it takes to turn someone into an Olympian, those tiny little costumes, and just how they pulled off that devilish triple axel.
How did you get into figure skating?
I started when I was six and skated competitively in Canada. I loved it—skating really took my heart. A scout saw me in a national competition and they hired me for the Ice Capades and I became a principal. I was never a skating champion; I was an artistic skater. So I made my name as an artistic skater in the professional world and then became a choreographer for Peggy Fleming and then went on to choreograph for Scott Hamilton, and then the list goes on.
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How did you make the move into choreography?
I loved performing, but I knew I couldn’t perform forever and I needed that kind of creative outlet. I was always working on new routines and creating for other people in the Ice Capades. Peggy Fleming saw me perform and saw that our styles aligned, so she asked me to choreograph a piece for her guest spot in the Ice Capades and that was my big break.
You've worked with Nancy Kerrigan, too. How did it feel for you to see and work on her story on screen with this particular angle?
It was really wild, because I had worked with all the major players except Tonya. Over the years, I’ve done television specials for all the major players: Nancy Kerrigan, Oksana Baiul, Kristi Yamaguchi. Her manager actually had asked me at one point if I would take Tonya on, but I was working on Champions on Ice, a worldwide Olympic tour, and I couldn’t take on an extra person. It was shortly after that this event happened, and because of that, there was so many eyes on skating. Everybody was all of a sudden interested in skating and there was a whole golden era that was born, of variety television specials. That’s kind of where I made my initial mark as a choreographer.
So, to choreograph Tonya by doing this movie and from her point of view was something I never expected and was really interesting: to recreate and reenact her movement and her jumping and her spinning and her skating style. I could never have guessed this would happen.
Do you remember hearing about the attack on Nancy, and how the community responded to and felt about it?
Absolutely. We were all in total shock. We could not believe this was happening, and I ended up doing the television special with Nancy Kerrigan after the Olympics, after that event; it was just so bizarre. But I really truly didn’t know about [Tonya's] family back then. It was enlightening reading the scripts because I had no idea.
Did you ever meet Tonya Harding?
Yes, I met her a couple times. She would guest-star in Champions on Ice.
Margot Robbie plays her in I, Tonya. Where was Margot at in terms of skating skill when she when you started working with her?
She’s really talented and she’s got great visualization abilities—it’s remarkable. She had skated a little bit as a kid, as a hockey player, but never as a figure skater, so really, it was very much like learning from scratch. But she’s a sport, she’s sporty. And I tried to key into how her body would respond best to this new discipline, and she worked very hard. She was an excellent student. I’d video her and she’d study it and come back and it would be better; it was great, probably one of the best experiences I’ve had working with a total beginner.
At the time, Tonya was famous for pulling off the challenging triple axel. I assume a beginner couldn't learn how to do that in a short amount of time. How did you and Margot approach that specific move, seeing that it’s so important to the film?
We really trained the entry position and the exit position, then her turning forward, being ecstatic, and skating in a circle with that ecstasy. We trained it over and over again from the beginning. I started in November with her and we shot at the end of January, so she didn’t have a lot of time. But the time she had, she really rehearsed hard and well.
I’m curious about what aspects of Tonya Harding’s personality, history, and performance you took into account when choreographing this film and training Margot.
[Tonya] was very focused and tunnel-visioned on speed, very intense with her approach to jumps, and her spins were very, very fast, so I tried to emulate through Margot her intensity and her deliberate movement with her arms, her positions. I had two excellent doubles and we were really able to fuse them together quite successfully.
What was Margot's training regimen like?
We trained three times a week, two hours a day, for five intensive weeks and then she went back to Australia. I found her a skating coach in Brisbane and she continued her training for three weeks there, and then I met her again in the beginning of the New Year in Atlanta and we picked up where we left off.
Those figure skating costumes are pretty unforgiving. What are they like to skate in?
It’s a leotard, basically, so if you’re not used to walking around in a leotard, you do feel somewhat unclothed. But you do sort of get used to it after time goes by. There’s very little encumbrance from a competitive skating costume; there’s no big skirt, it’s very light.
You used the word ecstasy earlier. How would you describe the feeling of skating?
It’s wonderful. When I performed, it really was like air to breathe for me. The blades, the skating, that really just became just part of my emotion and who I am. So anything that I would try to express from an emotional point of view, I was just able to go there. It’s almost an outer body experience; that’s the kind of feeling you have when you achieve something so difficult, and do it in competition on the moment that you need to. It is an extraordinary feeling—you would be ecstatic, absolutely.
