How ‘Barbie With ASL’ Came Together on Max — Along With Its Own Accessible Live Premiere
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“How many of you remember ASL Barbie?” Deaf West Theatre artistic director DJ Kurs signed from the stage at Westwood’s Regency Village Theatre last Thursday night, referring to Sign Language Barbie, which Mattel released in 2000. “Her hand was permanently stuck in the ‘I love you’ hand shape. Can you imagine how awkward that would be in real life? Like if she waved to the UPS driver, she would be like, ‘I love you?’”
The audience giggled as Kurs continued. “But seriously, that was a landmark moment back in those days. Barbie, using sign language, was in every store 20 years ago,” he said. “And tonight we celebrate a similar landmark: Children all across the country will be able to tune into the ASL version of Barbie the movie.”
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Kurs was speaking at the one-night-only theatrical screening of Barbie with ASL, held on the eve of its Dec. 15 streaming debut on Max. The offering – which is hosted by the service as a unique title alongside the non-American Sign Language version – is the first Warner Bros. movie to feature ASL as a language option. Although text captions are now a standard feature for all content on most video platforms, they often fall short of providing a complete experience for many deaf audience members.
“ASL is my first and most natural language,” Leila Hanaumi, the ASL performer for Barbie With ASL, tells The Hollywood Reporter through an interpreter. “Even though I am able to understand movies with English captioning, there are still some things missing: tone, the meaning of certain complex lines. It’s never going to be fully accessible for me as a deaf person. I’m also thinking about deaf people who experience language deprivation. Signing is often the only way they can get full access to any type of context.”
The idea to bring ASL to Max through Barbie’s streaming release originated from product manager Arturo Garcia and product designer Delaney Cunningham, who approached senior director of project management Angela McIntosh a few months ago with the suggestion. The prospect of piloting such an endeavor with the highest-grossing movie of the year (and, at $1.44 billion worldwide, in Warner Bros.’ 100-year history) wasn’t so much an issue, given the film’s own embrace of inclusion.
“Often when you are approaching a large cross-functional project like this on a potentially tight timeline, it can feel a little bit daunting. But we felt like we had the right idea at the right time,” says Warner Bros. Discovery senior vice president of global product management Naomi Waibel, who adds that the first step was to reach out to Deaf organizations and conduct customer research to understand how best to implement the feature. “We took our pitch deck to the people we knew in product, and every conversation we had unlocked another. Ultimately, the team got connected with folks in the content and studio space. It was never a question of ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ it was just everybody collaborating on ‘how.’”
With WBD vice president of DEI, creative and production Yvette Urbina helping to guide the project, one of the key learnings for the accessibility product team was that the ASL interpreter should be deaf (hearing people who know sign language are often hired for such positions). Spring Awakening and New Amsterdam star Sandra Mae Frank was initially tapped for the project, but when she became unavailable, she recommended her friend Hanaumi, an Austin-based content creator who covers songs in ASL (including an official collaboration with Tove Lo) and previously helped Deaf West consult with Disney on its ASL music video for Encanto’s “Surface Pressure.”
Hanaumi had about three weeks to prepare before flying to Los Angeles in late October for a total of three days of filming in front of a green screen. She worked with Artistic Sign Language coach Jac Cook (who was the performer for Ant-Man’s ASL offering, which was added to Disney+ in April) to convert the movie’s dialogue into the visual language of ASL, divided into 32 “chunks” that would each be filmed in a single take. Given the number of characters, the product team had considered the use of multiple interpreters, but after testing decided to have just Hanaumi perform the entire film.
That required an act of creation for Hanaumi and Cook that went beyond simple dialogue translation. “With the hearing audience, you know who is speaking because you can hear the difference in their voices,” Hanaumi said through an interpreter. “With one person doing all of the lines for several individuals, it’s so important to clearly show the difference with role-shifting [aligning the position of the body with the character onscreen], body language, facial expressions, signing style and even my demeanor.”
As a result, Hanaumi’s work in Barbie with ASL is compelling to watch even for non-deaf audiences and those who don’t know sign language. Like a one-woman orchestra and its conductor, she uses every part of her body to transform seamlessly among multiple Barbies and multiple Kens in a single (and often overlapping) exchange, losing none of the comedic or dramatic nuances and even adding visual cues for sound effects and accurately conveying the mood and rhythm of each of the movie’s iconic songs.
“People keep asking me how did I prepare for my role, but I only played one role. You just played a whole film,” Barbie star Margot Robbie said to Hanaumi, whose day job is communications manager for a deaf-owned marketing firm, during the Barbie with ASL post-screening Q&A. “It’s just a brilliant piece of acting.”
Just as WBD’s product team received an education in accessibility in order to launch Barbie With ASL’s streaming offering, so too did the company’s events and talent relations team when it came to hosting the special premiere. “We’re learning how to do it through practice,” said HBO and Max senior vp of talent relations, events and awards Jen Weinberg during a walkthrough for THR before doors opened last week.
Consulting with Deaf West as well as RespectAbility, the team had about a month to create a seamless experience for the 800-plus guests – invited through disability community organizations as well as schools for the deaf – to enjoy a night at the movies together in their primary language.
Max hired a total of 26 ASL interpreters – including six protactile signers for people who are deafblind – to accompany event staff stationed at every touchpoint across the venue, starting in the parking garage and moving through the check-in stations, concession stands and theater aisles, while onsite readers and guides also were available for blind and low-vision guests. Sixteen wheelchair spaces with companion seats were provided inside the theater, along with 30 assistive listening and audio description devices. Curbside drop-off and a nearby parking lot were reserved for low-mobility guests, along with 30 folding chairs on hand inside and outside the lobby and step stools at the concessions counters and restrooms for anyone who needed them. At the recommendation of RespectAbility, Max added an attendant stationed outside the accessible restrooms, because the doors had turning knobs on them instead of a simple “push to open.” Even the printed material – invitations, tickets, step-and-repeat – were reviewed for font size, color choice and visual contrast.
“We want everyone to feel [at home],” Weinberg said. For any accommodations that weren’t already flagged ahead of time, her team provided a concierge desk at arrival – the term “concierge” also was a conscious choice – to address any guest concerns, and Urbina led the event staff through training ahead of the premiere to adopt an available but not presumptuous stance. “Friendly but not imposing,” Weinberg said of the staff’s approach. “Be available for anyone to say ‘I need help’ without asking if they need help.”
The effect was a joyous event in which living with a disability was normalized, with friends and family members conversing excitedly with one another in sign language alongside people using wheelchairs, mobility canes and service animals.
For the program itself, all communication was conveyed simultaneously in three ways: spoken English, ASL (projected on the big screen for anyone in the theater to see) and text captioning.
“ASL picture-in-picture technology used in combination with text captioning is truly the gold standard in ensuring access,” RespectAbility board vice chair Delbert Whetter signed during his opening remarks before the screening, where Hanaumi was soon seen differentiating among the Barbies with three name signs: one for Stereotypical Barbie (Robbie), one for Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), and one for all the other Barbies.
As for Ken?
“He doesn’t get a name sign,” Hanaumi laughed. “He’s just K-E-N.”
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