Allison
Janney puts her spin on ice-skating scandal in 'I,
Tonya'
Send a link to a friend
[December 08, 2017]
By Jill Serjeant
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The
stars aligned for Allison Janney when she dressed up in
a cheap fur coat, perched a parakeet on her shoulder,
and chain-smoked and swore through figure-skating movie
"I, Tonya."
|
Not only was the part of the hard-driving mother of U.S. skater
Tonya Harding written expressly for Janney, it also took her
back to a world she knows intimately.
Figure skating was Janney's childhood passion and although she
doesn't perform any double axels in "I, Tonya," her role is
expected to bring the former "West Wing" actress her first Oscar
nomination next month.
"I had dreams of being an Olympic figure skater. I had a coach,
I worked really hard and I trained early in the morning and
after school and I was obsessed with it. I was quite graceful on
the ice but I'm six feet tall and ultimately didn't think I was
going to be able to do the jumps that were required to go to the
Olympics," Janney, now 58, said.

Dark comedy "I, Tonya," opening in U.S. movie theaters on
Friday, is based on the life of Harding (played by Margot
Robbie) and the infamous 1994 attack on her Olympic rival Nancy
Kerrigan.
Kerrigan was clubbed in the thigh in an attack orchestrated by
Harding's ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, that led to Harding being
banned for life from the U.S. Figure Skating Association.
Janney plays LaVona Harding, who bullies and beats her young
daughter to reach the top of a sport.
[to top of second column] |

"She is sort of a monster on the page and I had to find her
humanity, and what she wanted in life. I think if you asked LaVona,
she would say she gave her daughter an incredible upbringing and
made her a champion," Janney said.
While Robbie and screenwriter Steven Rogers met with Harding and
Gillooly, Janney had little to go on to play LaVona except for a
1980s student documentary.
"I could see so much defensiveness in her and denial about not
caring for her daughter ... She sort of brushed it off in a way that
made me think 'Wow. She does care'," said Janney.
Janney well recalls the Harding-Kerrigan incident but she came away
from the film with a different view.
"I definitely had a lot more compassion for Tonya Harding watching
this movie. I don't think we exonerate her completely but I don't
think she is as guilty as we all remember her to have been," she
said.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by James Dalgleish)
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |