Considering the mania and absolute obsession over the Barbie movie last summer, one might guess it was an easy sell to Hollywood studios. Wrong.
“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 played Barbie in the beloved movie that made a whopping $1.4 billion at box offices, told The Times. “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 more of a sure thing for Robbie is the recent launch of her gin brand Papa Salt, which was inspired by her many nights out clubbing in London’s Clapham neighborhood.
“This feels a lot more straightforward, it’s easier to predict things,” Robbie said of getting into the alcohol business. “You can lay this out on a spreadsheet in a way that you can’t lay out a movie idea.”
In other words, it’s much more tangible to sell a product than an idea, and she has a team of friends—Charlie Maas and Regan Riskas as well as her husband Tom Ackerley—in business with her.
The idea for the subtly flavored gin goes all the way back to when Robbie would pack vanilla tea bags in her purse during her nights out at Infernos, a nightclub frequented by her and “thousands of other Aussie Londoners,” she told The Times. Gin and tonics were her go-to drink, but that doesn’t mean they always 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 were on a mission to make a gin that could “complement any soda, taste great with tonic, and make a mean martini,” according to the company’s website. It took them 59 recipes to get there, but now they’re selling an “easy-drinking gin that celebrates the subtle taste of native Australian botanicals,” such as zesty wax flower, hibiscus, and citrus peel. Nutty wattleseed (an edible seed from Australia), pink peppercorn, and oyster shell are also complementing flavors.
While it was easier to sell an idea for a gin brand than a movie, that didn’t mean it was completely effortless to make a great-tasting alcohol. Robbie traveled to Australia to meet with Brian Restall, the owner of a wildly popular distiller there, and they got “absolutely sh**faced” together discussing the idea for the brand. But it didn’t take long for Restall to be sold on the idea, according to a Forbes Australia article.
While Barbie undoubtedly smacked Robbie back into the spotlight last summer, she’s been in several other hit movies and TV shows. She got her start on Australian soap opera Neighbours, in which she appeared in more than 300 episodes. She played disgraced stockbroker Jordan Belfort’s glamorous wife Naomi Lapaglia in the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street, which made nearly $407 million at box offices. She also stared as Jane Porter in The Legend of Tarzan and as Harley Quinn in the Suicide Squad movies.
But her big recognition came when she won an Academy Award for her role as figure skater Tonya Harding in the biopic I, Tonya, which landed her a role as Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots. She infamously, though, wasn’t nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in Barbie—and neither was director Greta Gerwig, in what’s been considered one of the biggest snubs in awards history. Barbie was the highest-grossing film of 2023, and in turn, Robbie brought home the biggest payday of any woman in Hollywood last year—$12.5 million.
Robbie is worth an estimated $60 million, which includes proceeds from the films in which she’s starred as well as from LuckyChap Entertainment, a production company she started with her friends and husband.
“There’s only so much you can do as an actor,” Robbie told 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.”
Margot Robbie has conquered the film industry, and now she has her eyes set on the lucrative gin market, with the launch of her own tipple. Along with her husband and business partner Tom Ackerley, as well as three other friends, Robbie has launched Papa Salt, and she says selling gin is easier than selling a movie.
The star and producer of Barbie, which brought in $1.4 billion, told The Times of London she found the process of creating and marketing her gin “refreshing,” explaining: “Movies are a crazy business where you are selling something that isn’t tangible, it’s an idea. 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.”
“This feels a lot more straightforward, it’s easier to predict things. You can lay this out on a spreadsheet in a way that you can’t lay out a movie idea.”
Despite this, Robbie’s production company LuckyChap has enjoyed huge success since she co-founded it in 2014. With the slate including hits like I, Tonya (2017), Promising Young Woman (2020), Saltburn (2023) and of course last year’s phenomenal Barbie, it has so far garnered 25 Academy Award nominations (Allison Janney winning an Oscar for her role of Tonya Harding’s mother), 18 BAFTA nominations and billions in box-office takings.
Robbie told the newspaper she was hesitant to follow so many other big names into the booming drink industry – Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Kylie Minogue et al – but feels this is a genuine interest for her, along with her husband and friends, not just a money-making opportunity. She said: “Our passions are movies and drinks, and now we’ve ticked them both.”
Source: The Times, Forbes Australia, Marie Claire Australia
