Credit: Warner Bros.Margot Robbie has been saying since the beginning of her Barbie press circuit that, when she first read Greta Gerwig’s script, she thought with equal parts rabid joy and resigned disappointment: “They’re never gonna let us make this movie.”
Thankfully for all of us, she was wrong – Greta Gerwig’s Barbie did, in fact, get made, and it’s poised to be one of the biggest movies of the summer, and probably the year.
So what was it about Barbie that made Margot Robbie think it would never make it past the table reads?
Margot Robby Says Mattel Was Shockingly Cool With Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ Script
Related: Barbie Enters the Real World in Latest Trailer
Robbie finally revealed in an interview with Fandango that it wasn’t even Warner Bros. she was worried about – it was Mattel.
The producer did not think that the toy company would allow them the space to have the free-ranging conversation necessary when “acknowledging, like, this long 60+ year history, including both the things that people love about Barbie, and the things that they hate – all while “having a relevant conversation about where the world is at today.”
The reason I didn’t think they’d let us make it, honestly, is that the Mattel CEO is a main character – Mattel itself is a character, and I just thought “they’re never gonna agree to this.” There were a lot of jokes in there where I was like “they’re not gonna let us get away with that – but they did!”
Clips from the film have shown Mattel – along with Mattel CEO Will Ferrell – as a villainous force in the story, at least in the scenes where Barbie appears to be bolting through their offices trying to escape. Allowing themselves to be seen as any sort of jailer or corporate overlord is an unexpected move on Mattel’s part, but necessary to address a toy with a history longer than any of their careers.
Mattel seems willing to acknowledge that Barbie is more than a toy, or even their Intellectual Property; she is an American – and global – icon. She’s such an ever-present force in the US that even if you didn’t have strong feelings about Barbie growing up, you had strong feelings about NOT having strong feelings.
America Fererra Confirms: The ‘Barbie’ Movie Isn’t Just For Barbie Girls
Related: New ‘Barbie’ Movie Promo Reveals Even More of BarbieLand
America Fererra, who plays non-Barbie, Real World character Gloria – likely a Mattel employee – was one of those kids who didn’t have a Barbie attachment growing up, because, as she explained it was a world she didn’t feel she belonged in.
However, despite this, she seemed to feel just as seen by the film as the cast members who could recall their Barbie adventures with perfect clarity – which speaks to Robbie’s claims that the Barbie movie addresses everyone who was ever affected by the franchise.
“They take Barbie and they address both the positives and the not-so-positives about what she’s meant in culture – how she started as a revolution, but as time went on, not so much – like, how do we bring Barbie into the 21st century…how do we make that relevant to girls today, who did not grow up seeing themselves represented in that story?”
Fererra seems to be implying that one of the specific issues the Barbie movie will address is the perception that it’s only for girls who look like the classic depiction of Barbie – blonde-haired, blue-eyed white girls with perfect figures and perky personalities.
Related: The Real Reason Amy Schumer Exited ‘Barbie’
We’ve already seen a little of this in the previous trailers – BarbieLand is populated by all kinds of Barbies who have all kinds of jobs and many different personalities, from President Barbie Issa Rae to Weird Barbie Kate McKinnon. The movie will no doubt explore where the gap was created between these two perceptions – and how that gap affected the persona shaped for Barbie by the public.
What Margot Robbie seemed to truly find brilliant about the script that Greta Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach created for Barbie is that it’s saying all of those things, not just about a doll, but about us ourselves as well. As she so succinctly summarized:
The whole experience is still fun…and weirdly emotional, and at the end of it all you’re not even really thinking about a doll, you’re thinking about what it means to be alive in the world.
Barbie will come alive in our world on July 21. Advanced screenings of the Barbie movie are also being offered in select cities – you can go to Fandango to see if tickets are still available near you.
How did you feel about Barbie growing up? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments.