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Margot Robbie struggled to figure out her character, then Greta Gerwig sent her a podcast.
In her cover interview with Vogue, Robbie said that her role of “Stereotypical Barbie” was difficult to navigate. She told the magazine that she uses “animal work” to figure out her characters. For example, Tonya Harding, whom she played in I, Tonya, was “a pit bull in life and a mustang on the ice.” But Robbie could not figure out what animal Barbie was.
“I was like, ‘Greta, I need to go on this whole character journey.’ And Greta was like, ‘Oh, I have a really good podcast for you,’” Robbie said. Gerwig sent Robbie an episode of This American Life that was about a woman who doesn’t introspect. “You know how you have a voice in your head all the time?” Robbie said. “This woman, she doesn’t have that voice in her head.”
Greta Gerwig hosted the Barbies for a sleepover (no Kens allowed).
Before filming got underway in London, Gerwig threw a slumber party for all the actors playing Barbies at Claridge’s Hotel. Kens were invited to stop by, but they were not allowed to sleep over. “Gosling couldn’t make it, so he sent a singing telegram in the form of an older Scottish man in a kilt who played bagpipes and delivered the speech from Braveheart,” per Vogue.
Every week the cast and crew got together for screenings of movies that inspired the film.
According to Vogue, the cast and crew of Barbie were invited to watch a movie that the film was referenced every Sunday at the Electric Cinema in Notting Hill, London. The cast and crew referred to the screenings as “movie church.” The films included Technicolor musicals like The Red Shoes (1948) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). “They have such a high level of what we came to call authentic artificiality,” Gerwig told Vogue. “You have a painted sky in a soundstage. Which is an illusion, but it’s also really there. The painted backdrop is really there.”
