America Ferrera Reacts to Young Girls Doing Her Epic “Barbie ”Monologue: 'Hilarious but Also Super Sad'

The actress finds it "super sad" that girls as young as 11 "already feel like they know what it's saying," she tells PEOPLE

America Ferrera's Barbie monologue immediately hit a chord with women when it hit theaters. But it's also speaking to a younger generation, the actress found out recently.

In this week's issue, the actress, 39, tells PEOPLE that she recently encountered a “young girl” who used the now-viral monologue — a speech about the "impossible" task of being a woman today — to audition for a theater program.

Though “hilarious” in a sense, Ferrera says it was “also super sad that 11-year-old girls resonate with that monologue and already feel like they know what it's saying."

Related: America Ferrera Says It’s 'Insane' That Her 'Average-Size Body' Was Considered 'Hollywood’s Version of Imperfect'

The emotional speech comes at a pivotal moment in the film as Ferrera’s character, a Mattel employee named Gloria, tells a distraught Barbie (Margot Robbie) that she is good enough — and details why it is “literally impossible to be a woman.”

“You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line,” Gloria says in the film. “It's too hard, it's too contradictory, and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you.”

The standout speech, which ultimately inspires the rest of the Barbies in Barbie Land to snap out of Ken's patriarchal brainwashing, also plucked the heartstrings of another demographic — mothers.

“I’ve had a lot of moms come to me and say, ‘I was watching with my kids, and afterward they said, Why were you crying?,’” she tells PEOPLE.

Related: America Ferrera Thanks ‘Women Who Keep Me Brave’ as She Receives Jane Fonda Humanitarian Award (Exclusive)

Also moved to tears by the speech were some of the films’ crew members, says Greta Gerwig, who directed and co-wrote the movie — not only 2023’s highest-grossing film but also Warner Bros.' biggest movie ever.

At a recent Q&A, Gerwig, 40, said that while filming the monologue — which Ferrera said she did “probably 30 to 50 full runs” of — the director “would watch people stop what they were doing and just start sobbing.”

Related: Barbie Leads 2024 Critics Choice Awards Film Nominations — See Full List, from Oppenheimer to Poor Things

According to Gerwig, who penned Barbie with husband Noah Baumbach, she wrote the now-iconic monologue herself, but it ultimately became a joint effort between herself and Ferrera.

The duo "would text each other anything related to it" as they refined the speech over several months before reaching the final version, she told The Cut.

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