He made off with her cash and jewelry, telling her that he had been sent by the mobsters. He roughed her up and threatened her family. When she refused, a man showed up at her door with a gun. They offered her protection for a slice of her profits. He introduced her to some of his mobster friends.

Like in the movie, she had hired a driver for security reasons. 'I saw someone lose $100 million in a night,' says Bloom, 'and he paid the next day.' -Ellenĭid a mobster really put a gun to Molly's head? It was a popular celebrity hangout and is famous for being the location where actor River Phoenix died of a drug overdose on Halloween morning in 1993. The club had been partly owned by Johnny Depp from its opening in 1993 until 2004. In answering the question, 'How accurate is Molly's Game?' we learned that the real nightclub where the poker games initially took place was The Viper Room on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.

There were A-list actors, the most famous people we see on television, politicians, and they're all seated around this table playing this game that I didn't know what it was, but it seemed to be super compelling to them.' -Ellen

I recognized in that instant that this is not an opportunity that a girl from a small town in Colorado gets. 'I made this mix CD with 'The Gambler' on it and other really clichéd songs,' says Molly, 'and I had a cheese plate, and my cutest outfit, and I walked into this room and it was incredible. One day Feinstein told her, 'I'm going to need you to help me run this poker game.' Molly went home and started Googling, 'What kind of music do poker players like to listen to?' and 'What do they eat?' While taking the year off between undergrad and presumably law school, Molly went to LA in 2003 and began working a number of different jobs, including as a cocktail waitress and an executive assistant to real estate entrepreneur Darin Feinstein, one of the co-owners of the Hollywood nightclub The Viper Room (renamed The Cobra Lounge in the movie).

The real player