Lucy Boynton says Proust Barbie was cut from “Barbie” because test audiences didn’t get literature reference

“Hopefully this will then be a trigger for people to read up on Marcel Proust,” she said.

Proust Barbie is responsible for one of the more esoteric gags in Barbie — and actress Lucy Boynton, who played her in the film, says she was originally intended to have a larger role in the movie.

In an interview with SiriusXM’s The Spotlight with Jessica Shaw, the Bohemian Rhapsody and Sing Street actress discussed her cameo as Proust Barbie. “Being on that set was wild,” she said. “Being in the Weird Barbie house was surreal. That's kind of why you immediately say yes to that opportunity, obviously to be in the environment with those brilliant brains, but yeah. To be on that set was wild.”

Boynton went on to explain how her character, who only appears in a brief gag about a failed line of dolls based on French novelist Marcel Proust, had material cut from Barbie because test audiences didn’t react well to the joke. “Proust Barbie is only softly in the background of the Barbie film because in the test screenings, it turns out that contemporary audiences don't know who Proust is, so the joke doesn't quite land,” she said. [It’s] a little bit of a heartbreaker that we are kind of losing touch with that history, but hopefully this will then be a trigger for people to read up on Marcel Proust. It was a shocker.”

Boynton said that the film’s writer-director Greta Gerwig called her to tell her about the gag’s soft reception. “Will Ferrell at one point references it and [Greta’s] like, ‘There's no reaction. They don't know who Proust is.’” She also said that her nixed material was a series of “little moments”: “It's not a whole Olivia Colman cameo,” she explained, referring to the Favourite star’s deleted scene.

Proust Barbie’s role is essentially relegated to an unspeaking background player in select scenes throughout the film. The character is briefly mentioned after Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie steps into a box at the Mattel Headquarters and the company’s CEO (Ferrell) says, “Remember Proust Barbie? That did not sell well.”

Gerwig previously told AP that she included Proust Barbie as an obscure reference due to a parallel between the author’s work and Barbie’s plot. “In Remembrance of Things Past, in Swann’s Way, he is literally thrown back into his childhood through the taste of the madeleine. I thought, well, that’ll be a nice Easter egg for one person.”

Listen to the full clip from The Spotlight with Jessica Shaw above.

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