According to New Idea, Clooney “was eyeing up Margot… for a string of upcoming films, but” he “blacklisted her from all future projects” because of her association with Russell. Robbie is set to star in the next Russell film, and that meant “she’s gone into the same blacklist pile as Mark Whalberg.”
Wahlberg “refused to take [Clooney’s] side following a fight with David on the set of Three Kings,” and Clooney has held the grudge ever since. This was bad news for Robbie, who sources say was “incredibly excited when George and his team expressed interest in working with her.”
Once she learned the reason why they won’t be, she’s keeping a strong resolve. “She’s not going to let it worry her,” the tabloid says, for this next movie “could earn her enough gongs to have her own prestigious inner circle.”
This story is kind of a bait-and-switch, a New Idea specialty. Blacklisting has a long and terrible history in Hollywood, a history Clooney covered a bit in Good Night and Good Luck. All the article says is that Clooney has some “blacklist pile” of highly successful working actors he refuses to collaborate with out of spite.
The headline “George Blacklists Margot” hints at the end of Robbie’s career, but the story is just about a petty grievance. It is true that Russell and Clooney were on bad terms for a long time, but there’s no evidence that Clooney held any animosity toward Wahlberg over it.
He starred with him in The Perfect Storm the following year and even offered Wahlberg a role in Ocean’s Eleven the year after, though the “Good Vibrations” singer chose Planet of the Apes instead.
The whole Wahlberg blacklist is totally made-up. In a 2012 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Clooney discussed the ending of his conflict with Russell. He ran into the Silver Linings Playbook director just weeks before and said they buried the hatchet:
We made a really, really great film, and we had a really rough time together, but it’s a case of both of us getting older. I really do appreciate the work he continues to do, and I think he appreciates what I’m trying to do.
If Clooney has no resentment toward Russell, then obviously he’d have no resentment toward a brand new collaborator. The story is completely false. This is the same tabloid that has repeatedly reported that Clooney was getting a divorce, yet he and Amal remain together with their twins. Clearly whatever sources this tabloid claims to have close to Clooney should not be trusted.
This isn’t the first bogus a-lister New Idea has claimed Robbie is at odds with. She apparently refused to sit near Brad Pitt, Clooney’s best friend, at the Golden Globes. This was two years after it already claimed the two were getting too close on the set of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, a movie directed by another former-Clooney collaborator Quentin Tarantino.
Robbie starred in more than one nominated movie at that ceremony, so she chose to sit alone, rather than choose. Robbie continues to star in blockbuster after blockbuster, for there’s no Clooney blacklist at all.