As the Barbie movie continues to be a pop culture phenomenon whose charm not even Joe Rogan can resist, the casting directors for the film recently opened up about populating the film with a wild assortment of Barbies and Kens.
While Ryan Gosling obviously scored the role of the main Ken, others like Simu Liu played various incarnation of the iconic accessory. However, the actors auditioning reportedly felt the need to show off their action figure abs, which wasn’t necessary. According to casting directors Allison Jones and Lucy Bevan, this happened a lot while picking actors for the “beach off” scene.
Via The Credits:
Before it became a go-to quote in the Barbie fandom lexicon, rival Ken’s challenge — “I’ll beach you off any day, Ken” — was one of the film’s audition lines. “Those scenes were fun to audition,” said Bevan. “Some of the Kens would take off their t-shirts, and we were like, no, no, you don’t need to take off your t-shirt. But Simu [Liu] just nailed that [line] in the film.”
As an aesthetic match to Barbie, you would assume Ken has to be in killer shape, but Jones and Bevan revealed that writer/director Greta Gerwig was genuinely more concerned with the actors matching the personality of their respective Kens. Rock-hard abs weren’t a concern.
“The thing that Greta did always stress was that none of these people were sarcastic or winking at the camera. They were really Kens and Barbies,” Jones said. “She really made the characters for who she liked best in different auditions.”
Barbie is now playing in theaters.
(Via The Credits)