1. I thought young Tonya was played by the same actress who played the daughter in Mad Men. I was way off (which is rare – my actor recognition abilities are highly attuned). That actress is Kiernan Shipka who is 18 now. Young Tonya was played by McKenna Grace from Gifted. She was awesome.
2. In a perfect world “Allison Janney” would be as synonymous with amazing performances as “Meryl Streep” is.
3. Despite growing up in the nineties when this all went down, I didn’t know the details of the crime at all. I always thought Gillooly and Shawn Eckhart did the actual attack on Nancy Kerrigan.
4. The songs from the soundtrack to this movie were featured heavily on 96.5 WCMF in Rochester when I was growing up. So, I, Tonya’s soundtrack was also the soundtrack of my father’s Buick. Am I white trash?
5. Someone needs to explain the face CGI they did in this movie to make it look like Morgot Robbie was doing those tricks.
6. I recognized Paul Walter Hauser, who played Shawn Eckhart, from the insult comic sketch from Key and Peele. His interview about his knowledge of espionage is one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in a long time.
7. The scene with Tonya putting on her makeup in the mirror.
8. I’m glad we got to see some footage of the actual Tonya Harding skating. She was damn good.
9. When is the last time in the last ten years or so you saw Portland, OR portrayed the way it is in this movie?
10. This film strikes me as somewhat similar to The Disaster Artist in that it was taking an ostensibly easy target and making that person sympathetic, even tragic. Also they both recreated actual scenes with their subjects and played them over the credits.
11. The most striking part of the movie was when Tonya addressed the audience about becoming a punchline. To paraphrase, she said, “It was like being abused all over again and you were my abusers.” And she was right. We all laughed. I did. I laughed at the actual story. I laughed at the Seinfeld episode on which this incident was based. But it’s deeper than that. I laughed at them all. I laughed at Monica Lewinsky and Pamela Anderson, women going through the most difficult times of their lives. The scene where Tonya eats a microwaved dinner while David Letterman reads his top ten list about her showed that we were all punching down.
