Every Fun Set Detail You Might Have Missed in 'Barbie'
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Barbie has been top of mind ever since the film’s first look images of Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken were released more than a year ago. The Greta Gerwig-directed movie sparked the vibrant Barbiecore trend and birthed seemingly endless collabs with brands like Ruggable and Funboy. Now that we've just surpassed the movie's July 21 theatrical release, the Barbie buzz is hitting its peak. Whether you've seen the movie twice already or are still waiting to catch your first screening, we've laid out all of the can't-miss set and filming location details from this summer's most talked about production.
The real-world scenes were filmed in Los Angeles.
By now, you know that Barbie leaves her picture-perfect world for the real world. Her exit from the pink paradise lands her in Los Angeles. In the first look photos, Robbie and Gosling were seen roller skating down the boardwalk in Venice Beach. Will Ferrell was also spotted at the location wearing skates.
Barbie Land is literally shaped like its name.
If you thought the Barbie Land lettering in the film was just a cute design introductory to the fantasy world, you didn't look close enough. "When you go into Barbie Land, you go into the dot of the 'i' of Barbie Land," production designer Sarah Greenwood tells House Beautiful. "So the streets are written as Barbie Land, and the 'i' is the circle that they live in."
Barbie Land is layered with 3-D and 2-D elements.
Greenwood compares the Barbie sets to dioramas and museum exhibits because they feature layers of 3-D and 2-D elements. Across Barbie Land, the 50-foot-tall painted sky stretched 800 feet around the studio with 35-foot-tall mountain cutouts set against them. As you get closer to the center of the sets, items become 3-D. Barbie's dream house includes a blend of 3-D and 2-D features as the actual toys do. Take her fridge, for example, which includes a decal of food and beverages for the interior and "toy" versions of them in the door shelving that Barbie can actually pick up.
Painted backgrounds add to Barbie Land’s artificial feel.
In a Vogue interview, Gerwig revealed that the movie's design is guided by old soundstage Technicolor musicals that "have such a high level of what we came to call authentic artificiality." She explained: "You have a painted sky in a soundstage. Which is an illusion, but it’s also really there. The painted backdrop is really there. The tangibility of the artifice is something that we kept going back to."
Painted backdrops are also used for the sequences when characters in the movie travel from Barbie Land to the real world and vice versa. If you're into the slightly surreal look, a mural wallpaper might offer a similar effect in your own home—whether you’re after a Barbie-themed design or a natural landscape.
The Barbie dream houses were inspired by Palm Springs.
Built at the iconic Warner Bros. Studios lot outside of London, the Barbie dream houses were inspired by the midcentury modern architecture and cul-de-sacs in Palm Springs. Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer specifically looked to Richard Neutra’s 1946 Kaufmann House, which happens to be one of the filming locations featured in Don’t Worry Darling. They landed on this design route early on in the process since they knew they weren't looking to replicate an existing Mattel Barbie dream house. The midcentury modern architecture lent itself nicely to the basic elements of the toy houses that the team focused on, like an open flow between rooms with no walls. Logistically, it was also important for the production to easily shoot from one house to another. Placing the houses in a circle allowed for this and ensured Barbie could see all of her friends.
"It's very interesting because everybody says, Oh my God, it's just like a dream house I used to have," Greenwood says. "And you go, Well, maybe that's what it feels like, which is good, but it's not a dream house. It's the feeling of a dream house."
Stereotypical Barbie's dream house has so many details viewers won't want to miss.
Look out for pink monkey statues, the flamingo mailbox, the wardrobe with glass doors (meant to mimic the urge to rip through a plastic Barbie box), and the kidney-shaped pool with a spiral slide (Robbie’s favorite feature).
The sets are smaller than human size.
The dream houses were adjusted to 23 percent smaller than human size. "The ceiling is actually quite close to one's head, and it only takes a few paces to cross the room," Gerwig has said. "It has the odd effect of making the actors seem big in the space but small overall."
Even though the homes were scaled down, they were still large structures. "When people were on the top bedroom floor, they had to be wired off," Spencer tells House Beautiful. "It was high. It was real. There's no fakery there."
Constructing the dream houses was an enormous engineering challenge.
While the dream houses look simple, that’s the very reason they were challenging to construct. Without walls, the homes are mainly floors, poles, and beams. ("The world outside had to become the wallpaper," Greenwood notes.) Each home has a chimney that visually grounds it, but the overall architecture is a bit skeleton-like and was challenging to make sturdy.
A dance number calls for a sparkly makeover.
At the beginning of the film, the dream houses get a sparkly makeover for a dance number. A reflective streamer backdrop sets the tone. The rooms of the open dream houses were covered in what looks like little square mirrors in gold and shades of pink. Of course, plenty of lights add to the shine and high energy.
Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House included 22 TV screens.
When Ken turns Barbie’s dream house into his "Mojo Dojo Casa House," the redesign is everything you'd expect of a hideous man cave. "I love the fact that if he was in one of his leather chairs, he would have his mini fridges stacked up around him like he's in Game of Thrones," Spencer says.
Other details that contributed to the contrasting aesthetic were the swinging saloon doors, a blender filled with Cheetos, 22 TV screens all playing the same horse-themed footage, and tons of black leather sofas (which necessitated a lengthy sourcing hunt for the production team to track down!).
Weird Barbie's house is designed to look squashed.
Weird Barbie (played by Kate Mckinnon)—whose look might remind you of the Cynthia doll in Rugrats—lives in a secluded residence. Influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho, the hilltop structure has a winding stair-clad path and is marked by a colorful, funky gated entrance. It's designed to look squashed since the architecture doesn't feature a single right angle. While it lacks some essentials, like a kitchen, Weird Barbie's home is a desirable piece of toy real estate—here's why, with deeper insight from Greenwood and Spencer (including where they got the fun living room rug and bubble chandeliers!).
The Mattel office was designed to feel like it's in two worlds.
The Mattel office is meant to be halfway between the real world and Barbie Land. Gerwig described the boardroom as "a six-year-old girl's pink and fluffy heart" in the movie's script. The playful atmosphere emphasizes the childlike qualities of the executives who fill it. If you're eager to analyze it further, get more insight into the vibrant set design and its contrasting black-and-white cubicle set here.
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The treehouse was replicated from the toy.
In Barbie's cul-de-sac, there's a 1985 treehouse marked by a sign that reads "This property has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places" by "Barbie Department of the Interior." Nearby, there's a toy version of the treehouse with the name "Chelsea" next to it. This treehouse was replicated from the toy, which was the doll Chelsea's treehouse. The dolls Skipper and Midge live in the treehouse.
The movie used up one company's global supply of fluorescent pink paint.
Naturally, the sets required a lot of pink paint. The seemingly white shade on set is, in fact, a very light pink. But for the fluorescent pink shade, the production used Rosco's entire supply. The company told The Los Angeles Times that its supply during the film's 2022 production was already lower than usual thanks to a stunted supply chain from the COVID-19 pandemic and a 2021 Texas deep freeze that damaged materials used to make the paint. "They used as much paint as we had," Lauren Proud, the vice president of global marketing for Rosco, told the outlet.
There's even a pink sand beach.
The pink doesn't stop at paint, clothing, and accessories. It even extends to the "natural" environment in Barbie Land—including the beaches that are made up of pink sand.
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