I, Tonya
Tonya Harding, an ex-competitive figure skater, was born on the wrong side of Portland’s tracks. Despite being athletically gifted, she wasn’t accepted by the figure skating community because of her inability to project the ideal image of grace and breeding. Although she was a national champion in figure skating, a medalist at the world championships, an Olympian and the first American woman who completed a Triple Axel in competition in 1994, Tonya is best remembered for her involvement in “the incident”, the leg-bashing of Nancy Kerrigan on January 6, 1994. Nancy, not unlike Tonya. She represented everything the figure-skating community desired in their leaders. Tonya was banned from competitive figure-skating for her association with that incident. Tonya tells the story of how she got into figure skating at the age of four and the events that followed. Tonya’s life is not only told by Tonya, but also key figures in her past and present their perspectives on their roles in Tonya’s life. While they might agree that the incident occurred, their perspectives on details may differ. They include her mother, Lavona, who was a waitress and paid her for figure-skating lessons. She was also abusive to her, believing that she was not good enough. The couple had an unhappy relationship. Jeff Gillooly was her friend, Shawn Eckardt was a dimming bulb and believed he was a greater player than he was. Martin Maddox is a fictional character providing general commentary on what the media wanted to see from Tonya about the incident. –Huggo
Genre: Drama
Director: Craig Gillespie
Actors: Allison Janney, Bobby Cannavale, Bojana Novaković, Julianne Nicholson, Margot Robbie, Paul Walter Hauser, Sebastian Stan
Country: United Kingdom, United States
