Tonya Harding revealed the one thing her mother didn’t actually do in “I, Tonya”
In I, Tonya, Allison Janney plays LaVona Golden, Tonya Harding’s mother. Janney very much embodies the real-life Golden on-screen, with her abusive parenting, fur coats, shoulder-dwelling parakeet, and more. But according to a new interview with Tonya Harding, there’s one scene in the movie about her life that stretches the truth a bit when it comes to her now-estranged mother…
Golden never actually smoked on the ice.
Harding just revealed this little detail in an interview with the actress who plays her, Margot Robbie, for The Hollywood Reporter. When asked about the experience of seeing herself and her family made into movie characters, Harding said Janney’s performance and Sebastian Stan’s portrayal of Harding’s ex-husband Jeff Gillooly were sometimes painfully accurate:
“HARDING: The first time that I saw Sebastian yell in the movie, it took me completely back to when those times happened, and it happened so often. But Allison Janney, wow, she couldn’t have hit my mother on the head any better. And it was hilarious. The one thing my mother didn’t do was smoke on the ice.
“ROBBIE: Yeah, that was Steven’s favorite line in the script. Diane [Harding’s coach] saying, ‘You can’t smoke on the ice,’ and her mom saying, ‘Well, I’ll smoke it quietly.’
The artistic choice may have been a bit of a stretch, but it also painted a picture of who LaVona Golden was, or is.
Harding, who’s had no contact with her mother for years, says she doesn’t know if Golden is still alive, and the movie’s creative team had no luck tracking her down. Harding, on the other hand, was cooperative throughout the process according to Robbie, and Sebastian Stan has said he was able to connect with Gillooly in real life, too.
Overall, Harding gave I, Tonya her skate-footed stamp of approval and didn’t even mind when the movie added in one more not-exactly-accurate exchange. At one point, Robbie’s version Harding curses out the judges, dropping at least one particularly profane insult (“suck my d***,” in case you were wondering). Tonya Harding says that never actually happened either, but she wishes it did.
