Greta Gerwig had a clear vision for the story she wanted to tell with Barbie and rejected the idea of cutting a scene with Margot Robbie and an older woman on a bench.
When Barbie crosses over to the real world, she comes across an older woman sitting on a bench. As the women exchange glances, Barbie compliments the older woman and tells her she is beautiful. When it was time to edit the film, Gerwig came under pressure to cut that particular scene from the final cut but ultimately opted to keep it.
“I love that scene so much,” Gerwig told Rolling Stone. “And the older woman on the bench is the costume designer Ann Roth. She’s a legend. It’s a cul-de-sac of a moment, in a way — it doesn’t lead anywhere. And in early cuts, looking at the movie, it was suggested, ‘Well, you could cut it. And actually, the story would move on just the same.’ And I said, ‘If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about.’”
Gerwig said she saw the scene as a “key moment” in Barbie’s journey adding, “To me, this is the heart of the movie. The way Margot plays that moment is so gentle and so unforced. There’s the more outrageous elements in the movie that people say, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe Mattel let you do this,’ or, ‘I can’t believe Warner Bros. let you do this.’ But to me, the part that I can’t believe that is still in the movie is this little cul-de-sac that doesn’t lead anywhere — except for, it’s the heart of the movie.”
Barbie is out in theaters now and it also stars Ryan Gosling as Ken, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, America Ferrera, Will Ferrell, Ariana Greenblatt, Emma Mackey, Alexandra Shipp, Michael Cera, Hari Nef, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Rhea Perlman, Ncuti Gatwa, Emerald Fennell, Sharon Rooney, Scott Evans, Ana Cruz Kayne, Connor Swindells, Ritu Arya, Jamie Demetriou and Marisa Abela.
