I, Tonya has already been named one of the best movies of 2018.
The movie is such a phenomenon even Tonya Harding is a fan… to a point.
The biopic tells the “irony-free, wildly contradictory” story of Harding, a polarising Olympic figure skater from the “wrong side of the tracks”.
In the early 1990s, Harding made headlines around the world when her on-ice rival, Nancy Kerrigan, was kneecapped just before the 1994 US Figure Skating Championships.
It was eventually revealed that Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, and his dodgy friend, Shawn Eckhardt, were behind the attack.
While Harding (played by Margot Robbie in the movie) maintained she had nothing to do with it, she was vilified by the media and the wider public. And the scandal ultimately put an end to her figure skating career.
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I, Tonya paints a broader picture of Harding. It takes us behind the headlines to see the real person at the centre of the scandal.
But it doesn’t go easy on Harding. If anything, it depicts her as a complex person who made a lot of bad decisions.
That’s why it’s such a surprise that the former Olympian is such a fan. For the most part, she loves it.
Speaking to the New York Times, Harding described the movie as “magnificent” but she said it did get a couple of things wrong.
Firstly, she said the movie was edited to make it look like she hunted rabbits to make her own fur coat.
According to Harding, she bought that fur coat. She said she loves fur coats and now has two. One is a mink coat that she would have liked to have worn to the premieres of the movie, but she knew she would be attacked by animal rights activists.
Secondly, Harding says she doesn’t actually have a potty mouth like the movie made out.
“Trust me I don’t say the word [expletive] 120 times a day. That might come out once in a while when something really bad happens or I hurt myself. I mean, the movie portrayed me as this person who cussed every 10 seconds and I don’t cuss like that.”