Margot Robbie Has the Best Response to Questions About When She’ll Have Kids

Oscar-nominated actor Margot Robbie is doing major things in her career, most recently earning a surprise SAG nod for her work in the historical film Mary Queen of Scots. But unfortunately, she has to devote a decent amount of time to fending off unsolicited questions about the future of her uterus — and Robbie has formed an excellent response when it comes to being asked about having kids.

Chatting with Radio Times on Tuesday, Robbie admitted that questions about whether she plans to have children have been unrelenting since she married British director Tom Ackerley in 2016. And the presumption inherent in that line of questioning has Robbie seeing red.

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“I got married, and the first question in almost every interview is, ‘Babies? When are you having one?’’ Robbie told Radio Times. “I’m so angry that there’s this social contract. You’re married, now have a baby. Don’t presume. I’ll do what I’m going to do.”

Robbie also made an excellent point about society’s double standard when it comes to couples, noting, “Only women get asked that when they get married. Men don’t.”

“It really made me angry,” Robbie doubled down of being asked the question. “How dare some old guy dictate what I can and can’t do when it comes to motherhood or my own body?”

Robbie recently snagged the title role as Barbie in an upcoming movie about the iconic doll. She closed out 2018 by transforming herself a 16th-century monarch for Mary Queen of Scots. And she has nine other projects in various stages of production at the moment.

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In other words, there’s no shortage of subject material to ask her about during interviews. The unfortunate fixation on her reproductive status goes to show that there’s still lots of work to do where women and gender tropes are concerned.

Robbie, by addressing the sexist question, is helping to further a dialogue we honestly shouldn’t even have to have in this day and age — 500 years after Elizabeth I, whom Robbie plays in Mary Queen of Scots, baffled the world by choosing not to produce an heir.

The gist of that conversation is this: Should anyone feel the urge to ask a celebrity (or any woman, really) about their reproductive choices, just don’t. Not only can it be annoying, as Robbie reinforces, but it can also venture into the territory of intrusive and even hurtful.