the film was really about "things we tell ourselves...how we change the narrative, and then want that to be the narrative." Gillespie was nominated for a Best Director AACTA; he said he believed Harding was guilty, but debated to what degree. Gillespie also said he wanted the film to convey "why [Tonya] is the way she is." Allison Janney played Harding's mother, LaVona, and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Regarding Harding's alleged role in Kerrigan's attack, Janney said "I know [Tonya was] complicit, but...I have a lot more empathy for her than I did." Janney also said, "I think LaVona was actually a very smart woman...knowing her daughter needed to be told she couldn't do it in order to do it was LaVona's way of saying, 'I was there to inspire her.'" Academic assessment In 1995, the book Women on Ice: Feminist Essays on the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Spectacle was published, containing numerous essays analyzing Harding's public image. For example, Abigail Feder wrote that there existed "overdetermined femininity in Ladies' Figure Skating...femininity and athleticism are mutually exclusive concepts in American culture." Sam Stoloff wrote that, during the scandal, the media placed a greater emphasis on Harding's class rather than her gender (femininity). He noted how she was subjected to a "litany of vaguely pejorative or mocking expressions" associated with "low class" cultural attributes, sometimes due to Harding's personal interests and hobbies. Stoloff theorized that Harding represented an American social class that required interpretation ("the class Other") as he referenced the anthropological tone of Susan Orlean's 1994 essay "Figures in a Mall," written for The New Yorker. In academic Sarah Marshall's 2014 essay entitled "Remote Control: Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, and the Spectacles of Female Power and Pain", she noted the pervasive role of the media in the 1994 scandal: "Somehow, in the scandal's aftermath, the form of the Tonya-bash was able to alchemize even the most chilling details of Tonya's life into tabloid gold." Marshall also examined the role of Harding's "tomboy" persona in the context of figure skating. She theorized that Harding was rejected by the figure skating ethos because she did not conform – as Marshall believed many figure skaters, including Nancy Kerrigan, did – to appearing as "beautiful without being sexual, strong without being intimidating, and vulnerable without being weak." References Works cited External links Interview with Harvey Schiller, former Exec. Dir. U.S. Olympic