Vanity Fair's new cover profile on Margot Robbie is getting a lot of attention on social media thanks to its ruminations on the 26-year-old actress, the blonde "girl next door" with "painfully blue" eyes who is tall, but only in the right pair of shoes. Just read it.

However, buried in the story, Robbie helpfully gives some answers to a mystery going all the way back to the 2011-2012 TV season: What went wrong with "Pan Am"? ABC's drama about 1960s airline stewardesses, starring Robbie, Christina Ricci and Kelli Garner, got a lot of attention. As Vanity Fair points out, that sort of throwback drama was all the rage on TV at the time, thanks to "Mad Men." The premiere earned about 11 million viewers on its Sunday night, fall 2011 premiere, but ratings fell quickly, and ABC canceled the series after just 14 episodes.

In Vanity Fair, Robbie — who played Laura, a new flight attendant who had left her fiance at the altar — explains that the show suffered from an affliction we like to call Early Ratings Panic.

"As soon as it went on-air, they were like, 'No, we didn't get the ratings we want — let's get a whole new crew of writers and make it more like 'Housewives,'" Robbie said. "And you're like, 'What? That's so not what the show was going to be.'"

In other words, ABC may have been looking for another hit to replace the aging "Desperate Housewives," the long-running drama series that would end in May 2012. Ultimately, Robbie implies, the quick change-up in direction tanked the show...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/07/06/margot-robbie-finally-explains-what-went-wrong-with-pan-am/

Barbie ★★★

"It’s like I’ve been in a dream where I was really invested in the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League."
I burst out laughing at that line. I just didn't see it coming, and the fact that it was said in a Warner Bros. summer blockbuster made it all the funnier. Then #GretaGerwig seemed to take aim at me by taking shots at Godfather stans and 'Slanted and Enchanted' enthusiasts (not Gerwig's first pot-shot at Stephen Malkmus) in the space of a minute. I momentarily had an existential crisis, and pondered "am I as toxic and horrid as those Snyder bros?" Nah.
Anyway, Barbie is good, and it should be applauded for being a $145 million feminist satire on patriarchy that's absolutely bonkers, but I don't think it's great. Performances wise, Ryan Gosling seems to be getting the majority of the praise for his high-Kenergy comedic work (even getting Oscar buzz), and he certainly got the biggest laughs in my screening tonight. However, I just think Margot Robbie as an icon of ideal beauty is perfect casting. And not to sound too pretentious, I kept thinking about The Passion of Joan of Arc. There is a surprising amount of emotional close-ups of Robbie in Barbie that reminded me of Renée Falconetti's heartbreaking work in Dreyer's 1928 French silent historical film.