Ariana Greenblatt was only 13 years old when she was cast as Tiny Tina in director Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie, which is finally coming to theaters this summer. Greenblatt, now 16, was at CinemaCon last week to receive their Rising Star of 2024 Award during which time she sat down for an exclusive interview with IGN. In our chat, Greenblatt revealed she drew inspiration from a similarly anarchic antiheroine for her interpretation of Borderlands’ unhinged, diminutive demolitions expert.
Greenblatt said her performance as Tiny Tina “was heavily inspired by Margot [Robbie]’s Harley Quinn rendition.” Borderlands was filmed in Budapest from April to June 2021, so Robbie had only played the DC Comics character in 2016’s The Suicide Squad and 2020’s Birds of Prey by the time Greenblatt stepped on set. (Robbie’s most recent, and possibly final, turn as Harley Quinn was in The Suicide Squad, which didn’t open until after Borderlands wrapped filming.)
“I read the sides and immediately thought of (Robbie’s Harley) and that’s one of the first things I told her actually for the process of getting Barbie,” Greenblatt said, referring to her role as Sasha in the 2023 blockbuster produced by and starring Robbie. “I watched how she prepared and she read the comic books and she did so much work to build Harley and watching her helped me build Tina.’
Greenblatt also drew inspiration from a personal friend at the time: “She fully just had this very carefree mindset and didn’t care about embarrassing herself and would say and do weird voices and things and movements. And she is my best friend, and I’d watch her just move and I told her in the middle of filming, I was like, ‘I just want you to know, I’m acting just like you in this movie.’ And she was like, ‘Great, awesome.’”
The actor also cited a group of YouTubers for helping her find Tiny Tina’s gestures and laugh. “At the time, it was 2021. I was watching these YouTubers with my friend group and we loved them and they had their own sense of humor that they created. They’re called the 4freakshow, and a lot of the laughs and hand motions I do for Tina is also inspired by them and the kids that were in that group.”
One inspiration Borderlands fans might expect Greenblatt to have drawn from is Ashly Burch, the voice actor behind Tiny Tina in the games. While Greenblatt did FaceTime with Burch, she ultimately opted to take the character’s voice in a slightly different direction for the film.
“The original voice of Tina is so loved and it’s so hard to do. And I thought about it a lot because I was like, ‘I could completely change my voice and do a very cartoon character,’ but then I thought about the people who might have never heard of Borderlands before and don’t like video games and just want to watch for the cast or the director or whatever the reason would be. You don’t want to sit through an hour and something movie listening to a crazy, insane voice and feral, horrifying kid.”
Greenblatt continued, “I needed to find a happy medium and a balance and some humanity with Tina because we see sides of Tina we’ve never seen before in this film, and I needed to find the middle ground and layers and arc to her because she doesn’t feel emotions like a normal kid would and she doesn’t have the same fears if she has any, which I don’t think she has.”
Look for more from our interview with Ariana Greenblatt ahead of Borderlands’ US release on August 9th. Meanwhile, check out our exclusive Borderlands trailer breakdown with Randy Pitchford and learn what Pitchford said about the Borderlands trailer’s Guardians of the Galaxy vibes.
