Greta Gerwig hung out on a Zoom call for an hour so Michael Cera could audition for Barbie
Cera almost missed out on the role, but enthusiasm apparently worked on Gerwig
Aux News Greta Gerwig
If Ryan Gosling was perfectly cast as Ken in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, then Michael Cera was even more perfectly cast as Ken’s friend Allan—which is not an insult, even though it kind of sounds like one. Allan is just sort of a generic man doll, a guy who is not even as interesting as the famously not-very-interesting Ken, which fits exactly into Cera’s comedic sensibilities. And yet, becuase Cera’s manager assumed he wouldn’t care about the Barbie movie, we almost missed out on seeing Cera embody (yet another) character he was born to play.
This came up in a “Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters” interview Cera did with GQ (conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike), where he told the story of how he got into Barbie. Apparently, at some point, his manager got a call seeing if Cera would be interested in playing Allan, and the manager only mentioned it to Cera offhandedly because it was filming in London and they assumed he wouldn’t want to go to London just for Barbie.
But Cera did want to go to London and he did want to be in Barbie, telling GQ, “I was like, ‘how can I not do it? I need to do it!’” So, Cera reached out to Gerwig directly, asking if he could play Allan, and she responded by immediately sending him a link and telling him that she’d be “hanging out” on Zoom for an hour and that he should just join whenever he was ready—which sounds both pretty cool and pretty terrifying. There are few things worse in this modern world than firing off a quick email, thinking your job is done, and then getting a “let’s hop on a Zoom call” response.
Things worked out for Cera, though, with him saying that he and Gerwig talked about the movie and then “it just all happened really fast from there.” So maybe there are worse things than having to get on Zoom with very little warning.
22 Comments
Do agents just make up their job as they go along? I only know of a handful of stories like this, but how do they just make decisions for actors based on what they think they’re gonna want to do? Maybe you don’t email Scarlett Johansson immediately every time some college student wants to put her in their final project, but it seems like you could let people know that Oscar nominee Greta Gerwig is asking for them specifically, instead of just assuming that they probably don’t want to go to London for four months.
The fact that film and tv agents don’t get murdered at a higher rate than the general population has always baffled me.
Yup, a big part of the job is that decision-making: you’re simultaneously sniffing out projects you can submit them for, as well as fielding calls for meetings or flat-out offers and deciding which ones to bring to their attention. Especially with it being rooted in connections and deal-making, it feels very seat-of-the-pants. Based on the story, it doesn’t sound like the agent straight-up tossed the opportunity in the bin so much as presented it like “thought I’d check, but you don’t want to do this, right?”
Good grief. To think the Simpsons has been around so long that Elizabeth Taylor was a guest voice on the show.
And that Bart & Lisa would know who she was! She wasn’t exactly still an A-list celebrity in the 1990s.
I like Cera and maybe this is partially intentional, but is he really such a huge star that you’d just assume he doesn’t want to be a part of what would be the highest budgeted thing on his resume by a huge margin? He’s been in one live-action movie in the last five years, and it had a budget of $20 million. You’re that sure he doesn’t want a piece of this $145 million tentpole?
“Next week on Entourage. . .”
Who among us can truthfully say they haven’t hung out on a Zoom call for an hour so Michael Cera could audition for them?
All of this for an extremely mid performance that wasn’t funny or sad or even camp.
… but enough about my sex life.
I wish most of my zoom calls were just an hour.
Luckily we use the free version that forcibly punts us out after 40 minutes.
So you’re saying you always have three links set up for your Zoom meetings?
Him?
… he’s really funny.
he isnt though
“Wow, Greta, I can’t believe you want me to be Mr Allan.”“Well, Allan. We would just say Allan.”
he has no chin. not sure where it went.
Michael Cera considering the job is agent is doing representing him
He had to audition playing a version of Michael Cera?
Unrelated, but my favourite fake dinosaur name I came up with was ‘Michealceratops’. I dunno, I feel like he’d get a kick out of that, and it made me laugh.