Contemplating the mania and absolute obsession over the Barbie film final summer season, one may guess it was a straightforward promote to Hollywood studios. Mistaken.
“Movies are a crazy business where you are selling something that isn’t tangible, it’s an idea,” Margot Robbie, the illustrious Australian actress who performed Barbie within the beloved film that made a whopping $1.4 billion at field workplaces, advised The Occasions. “You have no idea how much it’s going to make, who’s going to see it, if they’ll see it or how it will be received.”
What’s been extra of a certain factor for Robbie is the latest launch of her gin model Papa Salt, which was impressed by her many nights out clubbing in London’s Clapham neighborhood.
“This feels a lot more straightforward, it’s easier to predict things,” Robbie stated of entering into the alcohol enterprise. “You can lay this out on a spreadsheet in a way that you can’t lay out a movie idea.”
In different phrases, it’s way more tangible to promote a product than an thought, and she or he has a workforce of associates—Charlie Maas and Regan Riskas in addition to her husband Tom Ackerley—in enterprise together with her.
The thought for the subtly flavored gin goes all the way in which again to when Robbie would pack vanilla tea baggage in her purse throughout her nights out at Infernos, a nightclub frequented by her and “thousands of other Aussie Londoners,” she advised The Occasions. Gin and tonics had been her go-to drink, however that doesn’t imply they all the time tasted good.
“If you pop one into a terrible G&T, it suddenly tastes great. My handbag would be littered with them,” she recalled. “I’d buy a round and then just hand [out the tea bags].”
Robbie and her fellow Papa Salt cofounders had been on a mission to make a gin that would “complement any soda, taste great with tonic, and make a mean martini,” in keeping with the corporate’s web site. It took them 59 recipes to get there, however now they’re promoting an “easy-drinking gin that celebrates the subtle taste of native Australian botanicals,” corresponding to zesty wax flower, hibiscus, and citrus peel. Nutty wattleseed (an edible seed from Australia), pink peppercorn, and oyster shell are additionally complementing flavors.
Whereas it was simpler to promote an thought for a gin model than a film, that didn’t imply it was utterly easy to make a great-tasting alcohol. Robbie traveled to Australia to fulfill with Brian Restall, the proprietor of a wildly standard distiller there, and so they obtained “absolutely sh***faced” collectively discussing the thought for the model. However it didn’t take lengthy for Restall to be offered on the thought, in keeping with a Forbes Australia article.
How a lot Margot Robbie is value
Whereas Barbie undoubtedly smacked Robbie again into the highlight final summer season, she’s been in a number of different hit motion pictures and TV exhibits. She obtained her begin on Australian cleaning soap opera Neighbours, through which she appeared in additional than 300 episodes. She performed Jordan Belfort’s glamorous spouse Naomi Lapaglia within the 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Avenue, which made almost $407 million at field workplaces. She additionally stared as Jane Ported in The Legend of Tarzan and as Harley Quinn within the Suicide Squad motion pictures.
However her huge recognition got here when she received an Academy Award for her function as Tonya Harding within the biopic I, Tonya, which landed her a job as Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots. She infamously, although, didn’t win an Academy Award for her efficiency in Barbie—and neither did producer Greta Gerwig in what’s been thought-about one of many greatest snubs in awards historical past. Barbie was the highest-grossing movie of 2023, and in flip, Robbie introduced house the greatest payday of any girl in Hollywood final 12 months—$12.5 million.
Robbie is value an estimated $60 million, which incorporates proceeds from the movies through which she’s starred in addition to from LuckyChap Leisure, a manufacturing firm she began together with her associates and husband.
“There’s only so much you can do as an actor,” Robbie advised Marie Claire Australia in 2023. “As a producer you get to be a part of the conversations about who is being hired and in what roles and how much they’re getting paid.”
