America Ferrera Reveals How Her Husband's “Barbie” Cameo Happened: 'We Didn't Tell Anybody' (Exclusive)

America Ferrera and Ryan Piers Williams, who met in college, share two children and have been married since 2011

America Ferrera is sharing how she and her husband Ryan Piers Williams kept his Barbie cameo a secret!

In Barbie, Williams, 42, an actor, writer and producer, makes a few hilarious appearances as the husband to Ferrera's character, Gloria, a Mattel employee who meets Margot Robbie's Barbie with her daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) and is brought to Barbie Land. Williams's character is largely too busy practicing Spanish with the Duolingo app to notice his family's disappearance to the fictional Barbie neighborhood.

"We didn't tell anybody, any of our friends or family," Ferrera, 39, says of her husband's cheeky cameo in this week's issue of PEOPLE. And it all started with an early call she had with Barbie director and co-screenwriter Greta Gerwig.

"It came about because on my first zoom with Greta. I was telling her all my favorite parts of the script and all the parts that made me laugh out loud," Ferrera recalls. "And I said, "Oh my God, I laughed so hard when you cut to the dad doing his Spanish lessons, because my husband was literally in the other room doing his Spanish lessons."

Ferrera continues: "Right away she was like, "Oh my God, does he want to play your husband?" And I was like, "I don't know, you'll have to ask him." Fast forward to when they were closer to the shoot, Gerwig hadn't forgotten about the idea. "When it came time, she was like, "Remember when I asked you if your husband would play your husband?" And he said yes," says Ferrera. "So it was really fun and it did, it made it a family affair and it was great."

The Dumb Money star ultimately moved her family — she and Williams share son Sebastian, 5, and daughter Lucia Marisol, 3 — to Barbie's U.K. set during production for several months. "They were young enough where I could do that, but still life happened," Ferrera says. "People get sick, your childcare falls through, and then your spouse has to step in."

Related: Who Is America Ferrera's Husband? All About Ryan Piers Williams

Ferrera and Williams first met in the 2000s while they were studying at the University of Southern California. He cast Ferrera in a 2007 short film titled Muertas that he costarred in, wrote and directed. The pair got engaged in June 2010 and married in June 2011 in Chappaqua, New York, at the home of her Ugly Betty costar Vanessa Williams.

Ferrera tells PEOPLE that her 18-year-partnership with Williams is "one of the things I'm most proud of in my life."

"We've grown together. He is incredibly present and hands-on as a father, but he also really cares about my dreams," she says. "I think of his dreams as my responsibility too." 

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Ferrera has appeared in each of the three movies Williams has directed, including 2010's The Dry Land and 2014's X/Y. On top of his directing and producing work, Williams last acted in the 2018 movie 1985 before making his cameo in Barbie.

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

Ferrera commemorated the couple's 12th wedding anniversary and 18 total years together in a June Instagram post showing a photo of them cutting a cake at their wedding. "Happy Anniversary to my emergency contact. My person and home for 18 years," she wrote in a caption to that post. "Damn we look young here."

Barbie was the highest-grossing film of 2023. It is nominated for several awards at the upcoming 2024 Golden Globe Awards and Critics Choice Awards.

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