Margot Robbie Explains Choice to Film Nude Scenes in ‘Wolf of Wall Street,’ Even When Martin Scorsese Gave an Out

The actress and producer opened up about her breakout role more than a decade after the film was released.

Margot Robbie / Mike Coppola/Getty Images

More than a decade after her breakout hit film The Wolf of Wall Street, Margot Robbie is divulging details on that spicy scene. The actress, who just welcomed her first baby boy with husband Tom Ackerley, appeared on an episode of Ben Makiewicz’s Talking Pictures podcast and shared that Martin Scorsese gave her a choice about whether she wanted to film fully nude or not in her role as Naomi Lapaglia.

Robbie, who was in her early 20s at the time, now admits that she wasn’t fully thinking about how her full-frontal scenes would be in the world forever and everyone would be seeing them.

Scorcese offered up the idea of wearing a robe if that made her more comfortable, but “that’s not what [Lapaglia] would do in that scene,” the 34-year-old said, proving her dedication to embodying the blonde bombshell and trophy wife character. “The whole point is that she’s going to come out completely naked—that’s the card she’s playing right now.”

The Barbie star and producer was taking clever creative liberties even in the early days of her acting movie star career. While auditioning beside Leonardo DiCaprio (who played businessman Jordan Belfort) for the 2013 movie, the two were supposed to kiss, but Robbie slapped him instead (despite knowing how excited her friends were about the intimate on-screen moment).

“[I] just walloped him in the face. It was dead silent for what felt like an eternity but was probably three seconds,” the Queensland, Australia native shared. “They just burst out laughing. Leo and Marty were laughing so hard. They said, ‘That was great.’ I was thinking, ‘I’m going to get arrested, I’m pretty sure that’s assault or battery. Not only will you never work again, actually you will go to jail for this, you idiot. And also why did you have to hit him so hard? You should have done it lighter.’”

Check out Robbie’s full interview here; she also touches on practically all of her viral films like I, Tonya, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (in which she reunited with DiCaprio), Babylon and Bombshell, as well as several of the movies in which she played a major role behind the camera through her production company, LuckyChap Entertainment.