Vanity Fair’s new cover profile on Margot Robbie is getting 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 shoes. Just read it.
However, 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 — 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.
“After the fifth episode, you see this abrupt change in content. If they’re rehiring writers, it’s obviously not doing well,” Robbie said.
