The Cast of 'Barbie' Reveal How Old Hollywood and Disco Inspired 'Barbie' | Around The Table

at one moment I was like a human male in my backyard picking up a Ken doll and then like somehow magically had become that doll and I was being picked up now by Greta gerway and like the only way to become human again was to just follow her very specific directions [Music] I think capturing people's attention since the day she was invented and she is an icon but she's a very complicated one and there's been times when Bobby has been ahead of her times for sure and there's been times when she's been behind her at times but she's always been evolving and I kind of just feel like this movie is like the next evolution [Music] hi Barbie hi Ken we had movie church on Sunday mornings where we could go to the Notting Hill electric as you guys know and see a movie that was somehow a reference for Barbie and one of the movies I remember after the Barbie sleepover the movie Church movie that next morning was his girl Friday which had a lot to do with like the rhythm of the dialogue yeah in terms of how they moved and how they behaved I wanted it to feel heightened but I didn't want it to feel uh like a sketch where they were you know moving around like because I thought I was like well that will get tiresome in about 30 seconds but I also feel like when I we in movie Church bridges in general like soundstage musicals and like Oklahoma or Singing in the Rain like there's a quality in which the way people move it's just if they if you saw anyone on the street looking like a you know one of the background dancers in Oklahoma you'd be like oh no something's wrong but they're they're always like in the background like looking at a hat but it's like with their whole bodies like it's like and I was just like immense way sort of for the the actors who are all wonderful dancers as well I wanted to surround them with dancers so actually everyone in Barbie land is a Dancer so I didn't I didn't have background artists specifically they were they were all you know they were all these wonderful dancers so all the Barbies and Kens you see on the beach and everywhere they hold themselves differently than like you know civilians um someone said Jenny way our choreographer said dancers um their bodies always have a direction and that's different than sort of normal people so I thought that that was kind of like in this conception of Barbie land it's like a soundstage musical all the Barbies and Ken's are like on we didn't have like Barbie boot camp but I feel like Barbie dance rehearsals became the thing where like everybody very kind of reached a wavelength like a very high pitch wavelength I remember Greta describing it as like I want it to be the sleepover where it's like the coolest girls and the prettiest girls and the funniest girls but they're also the nicest girls and that is what that whole period felt like it was just like very high fever pitch love for all of it I remember the first dance rehearsal where the rest of you girls came to join and up until then I'd been doing a few of them on my own which was super fun because like the kind of dancing you wanted was like you know how you dance in your bedroom so it was like very fun but then as soon as all the other Barbies like started coming in run rehearsal and it was like yes girl and I was like oh my God this is this the movie's begun now it was so fun it was kind of like how your girlfriend's always like amp you up if you're out dancing it felt like that I love the Dance Floor the dancing was so special and also just like it was I liked that it was just like everyone was actually doing the dancing and it was about like I don't know that sweetness and whenever I need a lift I always look at they have a video of Michael learning the dance for the first time and it's like it's the best video when you do this going in a circle this one [Laughter] this one part of it and he was like Alan would know the Ken dancing [Laughter] Allen's dream is one day someone twists an ankle and they're like we need a fifth who knows the dance I don't remember much about this experience I felt like at one moment I was like a human male in my backyard picking up a Ken doll and then like somehow magically had become that doll and I was being picked up now by Greta gerway and like the only way to become human again was to just follow her very specific directions at a certain point I thought I had like left that kid behind and I realized that I needed his help to make this movie so I had to go back and make peace with him and uh ask for his help you know it was very it was good it was good for me thank you thank you for that getting the whole crew to dance is like a morning warm-up was a real Icebreaker I think it was the entire film but Greta I remember you saying that you felt like dancing was such a great way to break the ice for people because you don't have to like look each other in the eye and come up with conversation but you can like move together I like to try and make eye contact turn it while you dance everyone's real relaxed can I get get really to the bottom of something [Music] every day from now until forever [Music] do you guys ever think about dying Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt who did the all of the music and I had no idea how to make a pop song I was just like I I need a I need a pop song and um he we started trading music a bunch and then um we knew we wanted like a disco song that was like the thing and I think Dua Lipa makes like modern tragic disco hits like that's like her I mean when I think of her albums and when he was like I think Duo would be great for this and I was like oh my God and then she came one morning at 7am just like perfectly on time totally ready and I was like what are you doing today and she was like oh I'm just performing at the O2 Arena that was like what um but she and we went to her concert and we went to her concert yeah she has that ability to like write a disco song that's like so much fun but when you actually listen to it you're like she's sad you know well this one isn't it you're like I love disco music and disco also felt like really related to Barbie like in its heart because it's like so hopeful about people which is like disco assumes you want to dance that's not the assumption that every musical genre makes but disco makes it but yeah so we knew we knew it was that song and then we had this whole dance number which was amazing and then the kids sadly I I feel like you've never quite forgiven me no I I bad mouth you and everything I know did they really easy you didn't give her any you just threw her in and I was like wow she needs the solo and I just didn't think the president would have to dance that was game I was coming from DC and I got the the email that I was just to learn a dance number that would be performed on my first day and I was like oh okay and I learned it with the help of my friends who were in DC with me and they were hyping me up much like the dancers were hyping you up and then I landed to a video of the dance they changed so then I learned it that day and it was just in front of everyone so it was like the first day of school and I was naked so great thank you so much because you cut it really well I appreciated that I watched it and I was like oh no in the music in the music video The Dua Lipa actually made she does the dance you do and it cuts back to and I was like well see yeah thank you for that it was she was great my only sadness is the the sort of you guys didn't get to be in the dance I'm not sad I don't [Laughter] dance together okay you sure have I remember how I didn't I couldn't you tap danced with me you did we made up a memory no that's not true I remember we did the whole anyway this is real you can't tell they went to college together we went to college together we were actually in a play onion I appreciate I appreciate whenever I I'm left out of a dance number because I find that the worst thing that could happen and I did do those those were practical my body yeah thank you yes thank you for owning that every single person asked if that was your leg and so the way that you sold that you should be proud that's my crotch 180 degrees I did not have to do a split and which is just as well can't do that and so that was a fake leg and um a heavy one yeah it was actually the set design though it was so amazing because they Sarah who did the set design was like I've made all these like like holes in the wall where hey like if she can put her real leg in and then we'll rig the other leg up so it was all practical it was like done like it was like a way a practical effect where was your other leg in the wall in the wall sort of like this like if this is my leg like my other leg is here yeah yeah how do I ask that I can't picture it and then there was the one the one where you could like be your whole legs are down and then you had two fake legs on the side thank you for thinking of that whole everything about it and making it so I didn't have to obviously the sets were sculpture and art and the costumes and makeup and hair were like such art and sculpture every square millimeter of every look was like so finely considered and there was so much philosophy and thought behind it I remember um Ivana who did our uh hair which was mostly wigs it was telling me that she had experimented a lot with like the shape of the hair and how to make it doll-like and that she arrived at like it had to be thin on top and then thicker on the bottom in order to look doll-like and so we talked a lot about what this sort of Barbie who had been played with and burned and drawn on would look like and arrived at like I just pulled a bunch of pictures off the internet of I think I typed in like effed up doll just like we sent all these pictures back and forth and like even the placement of like pink streaks and the hair and like the placement of the marker around the eye was very very considered and thought through a Barbie has been played with for too much is typically naked and has lost her clothes and so I couldn't be nude I thought about it and then I thought no I don't know nude and so we we sort of sent back a lot of different ideas and just arrived at this like wild baby doll dress and and then you but you one of your rules was like nothing is dirty there's no dirt and I was like okay yeah shoot I thought I was in like Rags or something and you were like no it's elevated it's a like not in doll world and I was like you're right every everything they figured out but like because we talked about like because you were like conceived of her as like almost like an Edward gory type doll and then we were like well is it like Miss havisham is it disintegrated my feeling was about Barbie land like everything is like Space trash like you know like well I don't even know if this is true like my idea is like if you threw like a McDonald's container out into the space it like stays pristine because there's nothing to actually erode it is that true I don't know um but like did it would be like crazy and recombined and like distorted but not disintegrated somehow it wouldn't be like falling apart in that way it would never be moth eaten um but it always had to be worked out of like wow what is it exactly which was fun so fun [Music] [Applause] what are you doing here I'm coming with you [Music] did you bring your rollerblades I literally go nowhere without them I've got a question for the group was there any set because I just realized I'm like oh yeah you didn't get to see the weird Bob he said is there any set that anyone was like oh I never got to be on that set and I wanted to see it I wish everyone had been on the transportation sets yes um because they were so amazing yeah oh yeah the transportation sets were amazing incredible it was so cool I wanted to see the cannon Supreme Court and and um talk about the transport like how did you conceive of the transportation look because I got to be on them and they were amazing magic I mean and it was all mechanical yeah like what like why why how did you come up with that well I wanted I mean the whole thing for the whole movie which is what was so amazing about working with all these artists on it was I wanted to make everything as much as possible always tactile and handmade and that's why like sort of of shooting you know Miniatures and compositing it so it doesn't feel synthetic it feels like it's it's real it's there the transportation sequences we've gone through so many different versions of it and then I just kept seeing like I remember as a kid building basically that like a diorama that moved and I put pencils and like a scrolled piece of paper that I taped together and then you move the pencils in the background go and I remember being like delighted by it and I was like this is the best thing I've ever made I mean essentially it was like that but bigger the art Department sort of created kind of with the ability to and this is where like being able to do some version of like previous but in favor of doing something very in camera is really helpful because you're like well this is the angle of the camera this is the speed that this thing is moving at you can like do the math ahead of time but yeah it was like had three planes of movement so the back moved slowly the mid ground moved a little faster and then the foreground always had something going quickly like two loops on a treadmill so it looked like they were moving quickly it was so fun it was so moving getting to be there it felt like being in a toy box like in a diorama that a child would build and like that idea of in this day and age where you could just like digitize everything and pop a screen and make everything in a computer like the idea to approach this movie about toys with that Spirit of everything being something that looks like someone made it is like it was moving to be on those sets and it was like your vision was so magical and I feel like the crew was so thrilled too it's like they were like finally flexing these amazing muscles they have they're like oh we can do so many things and we get to do it on this movie whether they're building life-size dream houses all hand painting Mountains on a backdrop or making with them the men who were like puppeteering butterflies butterflies is the bikes and there was like a man on a ladder being like and I was like this is my favorite thing would you remember when we went in to see Roy who's out stunt coordinator Roy who takes it so seriously he was showing us what all the stunties had come up with for the Ken battle and it was so funny but they were it was like he was a military General and he was being he was like right positions one and they're all doing ridiculous things like giving like CPR to a toy horse or like whatever it is or like but and a lot of like genius sort of Contraptions and stuff like that like making them using them in catapults and like all these things incredible and we walked out of there like both like in hysterics but also like that was so pure how like yes how they all felt that came together and put that together was incredible incredible like so creative and silly and playful at the same time which I think is a yeah it's indicative of this whole film being the most creative they can be but also being like like a silly kid at the same time knowing they have like right their adult smarts to give them the ability to do it right well it's all like everybody who works on a movie on some level is like you know the kid who is like making something strange on the playground or it was like I made this or I'm doing this and like they all got to be that kid they're like look at what I did like if you pull this it rigs this way like it's all like and I feel like everyone from like Roy to Sarah to everyone it was like this is like the deepest part of themselves when they made it when there was almost like nothing to support what they were making it just was like them and they're like kooky idea I love that we started with the transportation sequence too that was our first scene that was it was such a great um way to start the movie because it set the tone for the level to which you were trying to make every moment count you know the love and the time that you put into those sets and how much time do they end up on screen not much just like but it's also like I I love that when it's just like oh my God it's all this work and then it's just the like costumes that were built in triplicate for ours see our little beds that were like how many fittings we did for each of those costumes that was just like a minute yeah the joy of getting to wear a custom Chanel snowsuit yeah a day um it is it's like so much beautiful Artistry in every frame yeah I don't thank you enough for the opportunity to wear a custom chanels I remember when I saw you in it I was like so happy Ryan Gosling is wearing a pink see with Chanel was that the last as happy as I was was that the last thing you shot was the pink snowsuit because the first thing you shot was the boat outfit because I remember when you showed up we were like he's really doing it was like there's no way he's gonna do this I was like I think he's gonna show up and be like and and then you showed up in that hat and that pink shirt and I was like okay and then and then the last thing we shot was you guys almost I think on the snow snowmobile and then you had to record yourself screaming that's right [Laughter] if this got out this could be an extremely weird things for our world this would be catastrophic credit didn't make it easy when you were like you were like there's a monologue Meryl Streep says she would like to do this cool no pressure we shot it at the very I mean like the end it felt like I was holding it for a long time and the energy was like building building so by the time we were there we shot it for two days in this house weird Barbie's house with like 12 people in the scene my experience of the moment was that Greta gave me so much space and so much trust and I obviously didn't want to F it up and I wanted to do it justice because I think you know when I read those words it's like oh okay truth like truth telling right and there's no woman in my life that this isn't true for so like how do you tell the truth you know and that was just the goal and you gave me so much space and so much trust and I felt like I could go to all the places because I had so much trust that you would know what was right for the movie and I felt like similar to what you said of like I'm in Greta girl wig's hands like I don't know and I don't know what's happening in your head like only Greta knows what she sees and hears and I that was freedom to to have so much trust in the leader of like she'll know so I'm free to do what I want and she'll she'll make it right such a powerful moment such a powerful moment in the movie and every time I've seen it people erupt in Applause and I have to say like it feels so true and what's even more powerful about it is that it feels so authentic to you because you have had so many moments in your career we've said the truthful thing at the right time like your your Ted Talk is a great example you know so you watched my TED Talk I love your Ted Talk oh however yeah identity identity is your superpower it's really powerful right right no it's really moving and it's and it felt like you know like somehow you had ice thanks no one rests until this doll is back in a box [Music] humans only have one ending get that Barbie [Music] tears through forever America will you do it with me yeah do you let America do it yeah this has been entertainment weeklies around the table with Barbie oh with Barbie in theaters July 21st that was perfect [Music]

Channel: Entertainment Weekly

Views: 708,010

Keywords: Entertainment Weekly, EW, entertainment, film, movies, celebrities, pop culture, entertainment news, Hollywood, interviews, comedy, news, celebrity, film (media genre), Around the table, barbie, barbie movie, barbie cast, barbie cast interview, Margot Robbie, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Michael Cera, America Ferrera, Greta Gerwig, margot robbie interview, ryan reynolds interview, america ferrera interview, new barbie movie, mattel, mattel barbie, margot robbie barbie, greta gerwig barbie

Id: KdMm-_g_JS8

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2023