Warning: This post contains a fairly mild spoiler for the movie Barbie — nothing big, but you never know who you’re going to make mad, so just be careful reading this, ya know?
Barbie is a big, silly, aggressively pink blockbuster in which Ryan Gosling gets to be funny onscreen for the first time since his 2017 stint on SNL. It’s also pretty blatantly feminist. Ben Shapiro’s brain probably melted during his now-infamous hatewatch when he heard the big speech America Ferrera’s character delivers before the triumphant third act kicks in. Others have cheered, even weapt. That’s what happened with cast and crew while they were filming it.
Director/co-writer Greta Gerwig spoke with The New York Times (in a bit caught by Insider) after her film’s ridiculously huge opening weekend (and its continued dominance into the weekdays), and she was asked about that speech, which concerns the tightrope women have to walk to make it in society. She said they tailored the speech to Ferrera, talking to her about her life so that they “really embroidered it with her own specificity.”
When they finally filmed it, Gerwig recalled that “three takes in, I was crying. Then I looked around, and everyone was crying — even the men were tearing up.”
Then something hit her: “I suddenly thought that this tightrope she’s explaining is something that is present for women in the way that she’s describing it, but it’s also present for everybody.”
Gerwig continued:
“Everybody is afraid they’re going to put a foot wrong and it’s all going to come crashing down, and in that moment of doing that monologue, she was giving people permission to step off that tightrope. I don’t think I realized until then that’s what that moment was for. [Ferrera] had a piece of the puzzle in her as an actor and collaborator and artist that explained it back to me.”
NYT also asked Gerwig about the GOP elephant in the room, namely all the rightwing hate from not only Ben Shapiro, but also Ted Cruz, Elon Musk, even Matt Gaetz’s wife. Gerwig was diplomatic, saying she hadn’t expected the furor, even inviting them to give it a chance.
“My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men,” She said. “I hope that in all of that passion, if they see it or engage with it, it can give them some of the relief that it gave other people.”
Barbie is now in theaters, where it will probably be playing for quite a long time. Ditto Oppenheimer.