Lucy Boynton Says Proust Barbie Was Cut From Film Because Test Audiences Didn’t Get the Joke

Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster film could have included a bigger appearance from Proust Barbie. According to actress Lucy Boynton, Barbie originally featured more scenes with the character, who was based on French author Marcel Proust.

Boynton, speaking on SiriusXM’s The Spotlight with Jessica Shaw, explained that she filmed more than the short scene in which she shows up. “Being on that set was wild,” she said. “Being in the Weird Barbie house was surreal. That’s 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.”

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The actress’s character appears in the background of one scene and is also referenced as part of a gag about a failed line of dolls based on Proust’s work. But more material was apparently cut because test audiences didn’t respond well.

“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,” Boynton said. “Which is 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.”

She added that Gerwig called her to discuss the response. “Will Ferrell at one point references it and [Greta’s] like, ‘There’s no reaction. They don’t know who Proust is,'” Boynton said, noting that the cut material was a series of “little moments.”

Gerwig previously told the Associated Press that she included Proust Barbie as an obscure reference due to a parallel between the author’s work and the film’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,” the director explained. “I thought, well, that’ll be a nice Easter egg for one person.”

Boynton joked that her role was “not a whole Olivia Colman cameo” in reference to Colman’s role, which was cut entirely from the film. Helen Mirren, who plays the film’s narrator, told Variety earlier this year that Colman was initially in the story.

“It was a very funny scene with Olivia Colman sort of playing drunk and us clashing about who is the real grande dame of British actresses,” Mirren said. “She comes in and tries to take over the role of the narrator, and I had to fight her off.”

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