We all know Margot Robbie best as an actress, but along with being a producer, were you also aware she’s a tattoo artist? Well, an amateur tattoo artist… and as it turns out, she’s retired from inking people, like she did during her time as Harley Quinn on the Suicide Squad set. An incident involving her tattooing a friend right before a wedding led Robbie, who’s reprising Harley in Birds of Prey, to set aside this hobby, with her recalling:
So one of my good friends was getting married in Australia and had the bachelorette [party] the night before. And of course there was a lot of drinking, and they were like, ‘Oh, we’ll get matching tattoos because that’s a great idea.’ And I was tattooing my friend on her back… another friend drawn it on in biro, like in pen, and then I tattooed it. And then when I showed her afterwards, she was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that’s what I was getting.’ And I was like, ‘Oh God, what did you think you were getting?’ She’s like, ‘Doesn’t matter, I like it either way.’ It was lucky she was cool with that. But do you know who was not cool about it? Her mum the next day at the wedding when she walked down the aisle as one of the maids of honor in a backless dress, and there’s like this red, raw, scabbing tattoo. And her mum was filthy with me. She, like, rassed at me at the wedding. She was so angry, and I thought, 'I really shouldn't do this anymore.' I don't know if Patricia's okay with it yet. So I hung up the gun.
Whoops! Right before a wedding is not the ideal time for a tattooing mishap to be on full display, and while her friend seemed okay with the design itself, it’s perfectly understandable why that mother got upset with Margot Robbie. It’s probably for the best that she leave this kind of artistry to the professionals.
Margot Robbie recounted this anecdote while appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon when the eponymous host asked if she was still tattooing people. In between acting out her Harley Quinn scenes in Suicide Squad back in 2015, Robbie received attention for tattooing members of the cast and crew, including director David Ayer, with ’SKWAD.’
However, as Margot Robbie acknowledged, this incident with her friend at the bachelorette party wasn’t her first tattooing mishap. For instance, when she was tattooing ’SKWAD’ on Jai Courtney’s assistant, Simon, during Suicide Squad’s production, she accidentally went straight from ’S’ to ‘W.’ That’s unfortunate for Simon, but at least that mistake comes with a fun story he gets to tell at parties.
Margot Robbie didn’t reveal when she decided to give up the tattooing life, but one would imagine that if she’d given any to her co-stars and co-workers on Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), we would have heard about it by now. So if you got some body ink while Robbie was in her tattooing phase, congratulations, you’re part of a select group that embraced the risk that came with her putting that gun to your skin.
Four years after her appearance in Suicide Squad, Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn returns in Birds of Prey, where she’s fresh off her breakup with The Joker and teams up with several women to bring down one of Gotham City’s most powerful crime bosses. The movie’s cast includes Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Huntress, Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Black Canary, Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya, Ella Jay Basco as Cassandra Cain, Ewan McGregor as Black Mask and Chris Messina as Victor Zsasz.
Directed by Cathy Yan and written by Christina Hodson, Birds of Prey, which is getting a lot of positive critical reception, opens in theaters on Friday, February 7. Margot Robbie is set to play Harley Quinn for a third time in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, and you can learn what other DC movies are on the way with our handy guide.
