Margot Robbie felt “lost” creating the character of Barbie, but Greta Gerwig helped her find it
Greta Gerwig's esoteric references helped Margot Robbie create a character who has "no interiority" in Barbie
Aux News Greta Gerwig
It’s not easy being pink. Both Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie had trouble figuring out who Barbie actually was when they set out to make Barbie: the character has “no inner life” and “no desires,” Gerwig noted at a recent Q&A attended by The A.V. Club. “She’s not vapid, but she just doesn’t have any interiority.” So how do you play a character like that?
“I felt so lost because I normally have, like, a bit of a tool kit,” Robbie explained. That toolkit includes coming up with childhood memories, working with a movement coach, picking out animals, pulling up pictures, and more. But “none of those tools were applicable to Barbie,” the actor lamented. “I was like an hour and a half into, like, standing like a flamingo, and I realized, ‘Oh, none of these things are gonna work for this character,’ because building from the inside out isn’t what this movie calls for. She’s outside and then you’re gonna find her inside.”
Feeling “vulnerable and exposed,” Robbie showed up at Gerwig’s house “in the middle of the night being like, ‘Help me, I’m gonna ruin this movie, what do I do?’” The director gave her star some “amazing things” to work with. “Greta can not only reference a movie from like 1931 at the same time as she’s referencing a recent TikTok,” but she’ll also “find the thing that’s scaring you most before you know how to articulate it… and then sit in it with you,” Robbie gushed. “Like, she doesn’t give you the answer immediately, she sits in that with you. And then you find it together. And she had so many ways of doing that for this character.”
As Robbie has previously shared, one of Gerwig’s references for her was a This American Life episode about someone who doesn’t “have the inner monologue that we all have” (“She can’t introspect, but she’s very smart”). “Things like that Greta would be like, listen to this, I think it might help,” Robbie recalled. “She doesn’t tie up answers neatly in a bow, but she kind of leads you, like, gently by the hand down this scary path. And then you go down and you’re like, oh, I discovered so much down here… Greta’s an amazing director.”
Such an amazing director, in fact, that Robbie sees Barbie as just the beginning of a bright future. “We might be the new, you know, Scorsese and De Niro. Or Scorsese and Leo, you know?” Robbie joked to Entertainment Tonight at the Gotham Awards, before telling Gerwig, “What I mean to say is, you have to work with me again at least another four times.”
26 Comments
Is this news? Directors help actors, like, all the time.
Celebrity news, sure. Being specific in the process is basic celebrity news.
Being positively supportive doesn’t get enough press, however. It’s good to see it highlighted as a personal trait.
Bah, that’s not real directing. Real directing is when you drive your actors to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion, and berate them, like Erich von Stroheim when he yelled at his actors while fighting in 120-degree desert heat to “Hate each other just like you hate me!”
Or like Kubrick abused Shelley Duvall on The Shining set?
Or David O. Russell when he reduced Amy Adams to tears on “American Hustle.” No actor should ever leave a production without severe emotional trauma.
Or that time Werner Herzog psychologically destroyed Klaus Kinski with a piece of Toblerone?
Greta Gerwig is not a raping monster.
Greta Gerwig is an ally of the minorities.
Greta Gerwig doesn’t groom.
It does seem less like “news” and more like “awards season promotion”.
My first thought was “Ah, so the Blu-Ray is coming out, eh?”
It’s already been out for quite a while. I got it weeks ago.
Not Joss Whedon. He just yells at you for gaining weight.
Disappointing, right? I expected an entertainment news site that only reports on rare or unusual things.
Help ‘em right out the door!
It could be news, but this isn’t the place for it.
an entertainment website is no place for this!
I’m just not surprised when a piece about a woman is posted and commenters don’t give it the serious treatment it might deserve. The AVCLub never was that kind of place.
I was about to say, isnt this the standard procedure for every film ever made?
It’s not so much news as insight into the process of making the most successful film of 2023. As someone who has tried to inhabit a character, I find it very interesting to see how Robbie and Gerwig went about doing this with a non-person. That’s a lot more difficult than portraying a real human, either fictional or non-fictional.
It’s campaigning for a Best Director Oscar. So… kinda?
She kinda has a point. As a toy, being a blank slate is good for Barbie so whoever is playing with her can project. But as a character you have to act, it might be a bit “uh, what do I do here?”
Did I miss it, or has AV Club not commented on Shane MacGowan’s passing?
https://www.avclub.com/r-i-p-shane-macgowan-pogues-frontman-1851060994I missed it on the front page too.
Thanks!
They didn’t gaf when Terence Davies passsed on Octoer 7th; I mentioned it so often that I suspect it might even have been intentional.
Finally got to see Barbie last weekend and I was hoping to like it more than I did. Margot Robbie was great but overall it was…fine. an interesting experiment if anything.