Margot Robbie's Underseen Period Drama Was Canceled Way Too Soon

I bet you didn't know that Margot Robbie starred in a TV drama set in the 1960s that, inexplicably, wasn't "Mad Men." The reason you're likely unaware of this is because the series, titled "Pan Am," was canceled by its network ABC after just one season and 14 episodes. So, what was the deal with "Pan Am," anyway?

Created by Jack Orman (a television veteran known for shows like "ER" and "JAG"), "Pan Am" is about the flight crews who worked on the now-shuttered but once famous Pan Am airline (which was very real), specifically ones who flew on a then-revolutionary plane known as the Clipper Majestic. (This particular named plane is fictional, but it represents planes like Boeing 707s and 747s that were fresh, new Jet Age inventions at the time.) 

Robbie plays Laura Cameron, a fresh-faced Pan Am stewardess who works alongside her much more experienced older sister Kate (Kelli Garner). Flanked by colleagues like the crew's purser (who's in charge of the finances), Maggie Ryan (Christina Ricci), French stewardess Colette Valois (Karine Vanasse), and co-pilot Ted Vanderway (Michael Mosley), with whom Laura finds romance, Laura navigates the skies and her personal life across these 14 short episodes.

"Pan Am" was canceled due to low viewership, but Ricci, speaking to The AV Club in 2018, had a pretty good explanation. "It should not have been on network television. I think if that had been [on] a cable show or streaming, they would've been able to do so much more," she noted. "Making a show about that period of time and having to be so PC, it doesn't make sense, because there's no substance there." Ricci is likely correct, but by that point, the damage was done. Thankfully, Robbie landed on her feet ... in an Oscar-nominated movie.

After "Pan Am" was officially canceled in early 2012, Margot Robbie, who was a known entity in Australia for the soap opera "Neighbors," made a brief but impactful appearance in the 2013 romantic dramedy "About Time" as Charlotte (a girl with whom the movie's lead Tim, played by Domhnall Gleeson, is briefly obsessed). Then, her biggest break to date came courtesy of legendary director Martin Scorsese and his frequent collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio; specifically, 2013's "The Wolf of Wall Street," a biopic of crooked Wall Street trader Jordan Belfort starring DiCaprio as Belfort himself.

As DiCaprio's Jordan quietly rises through the ranks on Wall Street thanks to his talent at overvaluing stocks to guileless consumers, he ditches his loyal first wife — Teresa Petrillo, played by Emmy winner Cristin Milioti — in favor of Robbie's character, Naomi Lapaglia. Referred to as the "Duchess of Bay Ridge" by Jordan in voiceover, Naomi is beautiful, enthralled by Jordan's charm and seemingly endless wealth, and does get involved in a fair amount of his schemes ... but she also balks at committing outright crimes, trying and usually failing to keep Jordan together as his addiction to alcohol and other drugs spirals out of control.

Robbie is absolutely phenomenal in "The Wolf of Wall Street" — she even improvised a slap during her audition that deeply impressed both DiCaprio and Scorsese — and holds her own against experienced performers like DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Jon Bernthal, and the late, great Rob Reiner. Thankfully, this is the project that launched Robbie into the stratosphere, and now, she's firmly part of Hollywood's A-list.

After "The Wolf of Wall Street," Margot Robbie showed off her considerable range with roles like Harley Quinn in the DC Extended Universe, an Oscar-nominated turn as real-life, scandal-plagued figure skater Tonya Harding in "I, Tonya," love interest Jane in "The Legend of Tarzan" with Alexander Skårsgard, and the famed monarch Queen Elizabeth I in "Mary Queen of Scots" opposite Saoirse Ronan as the titular queen. In addition to all of that, Robbie also scored the coveted role of slain real-life actor Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino's revisionist "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." In recent years, though, Robbie has also become a powerhouse producer, getting projects off the ground whether she appears in them or not.

"Promising Young Woman," the directorial debut that won writer-director Emerald Fennell an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, was produced by Robbie's company LuckyChap (which she runs with her husband Tom Ackerley), as were shows like "Maid," "Dollface," and "Sirens." Robbie has also produced plenty of projects that feature her, like the aforementioned "I, Tonya," the wonderfully ridiculous standalone Harley Quinn movie "Birds of Prey," and "Barbie," which is probably her biggest film to date in terms of both notoriety and box office numbers. Robbie was even reportedly instrumental in ensuring that "Barbie" was made in the way that she and her writer-director Greta Gerwig intended without much studio interference, and her bet paid off when the film crossed the billion dollar threshold at the box office in mere weeks.

Robbie has come a long way since her humble beginnings on "Pan Am," so maybe it's for the best that the series didn't stick around — otherwise, we might never have gotten to see Robbie play Barbie.