Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig explain how Gal Gadot defines ‘Barbie energy’

Jordan Hoffman
·3 min read
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We’re now only two months away from the release of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” The new film starring Margot Robbie, which the actress also produced, promises to be a candy-colored “Truman Show” meets “Elf” meets animated GIF farm with the wacky costumes and facial expressions deployed by Robbie and co-stars Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Hari Nef, Michael Cera, Issa Rae, Helen Mirren, and many others. 

In a conversation with Vogue, the two-time Oscar-nominee Robbie, who took the reins of the project after years of development that included an Amy Schumer version and another intended for Anne Hathaway, confessed that she was never a girl who played with Barbies. (This type of IP-negging is somewhat reminiscent of J.J. Abrams telling San Diego Comic-Con that he never watched “Star Trek” growing up; his 2009 film still ended up being good.)

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In the article, it is revealed that Gerwig accepted the challenge of figuring out a way to turn an internationally known brand into a story, and signed her frequent collaborator (and life partner) Noah Baumbach up for the job as co-writer without telling him first. “She broke the news to me after we were already doing it,” he said. 

A big selling point for “Barbie” is Ryan Gosling’s turn as Ken. The two-time Academy Award-nominated actor said, “Ken wasn’t really on my bucket list. But in fairness, I don’t have a bucket list. So I thought I’d give it a shot.” He wasn’t in a rush to tell Vogue how he got into character. “It would be very un-Ken of me to talk about Ken,” he said. But he explained that Robbie would leave him presents each day to get him psyched up.

“She left a pink present with a pink bow, from Barbie to Ken, every day while we were filming. They were all beach-related. Like puka shells, or a sign that says ‘Pray for surf.’ Because Ken’s job is just beach. I’ve never quite figured out what that means. But I felt like she was trying to help Ken understand, through these gifts that she was giving,” he said. 

For the performances, Gerwig and Robbie referred a lot to “Barbie energy.” When casting the avalanche of supporting players, they held a specific A-lister up as a model: Gal Gadot. “Gal Gadot is Barbie energy. Because Gal Gadot is so impossibly beautiful, but you don’t hate her for being that beautiful, because she’s so genuinely sincere, and she’s so enthusiastically kind, that it’s almost dorky. It’s like right before being a dork,” Robbie said. 

The daffy and fun “Barbie” is out in theaters on July 21, the same day as the grim and explosive Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer.” The question isn’t which movie you see, but which movie you see first on your epic double feature.

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