Alex: Hello and welcome to this celebration of movie excellence in 2024. I'm Alex Zane, and this is Countdown to the BAFTAs, where in this series we look back at five movies that were long listed along with the nominees for that most coveted award: Best Film at the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2024.
This time it's Barbie.
[START CLIP]
Gloria: You have to never get old, never be rude. Never show off. Never be selfish, never fall down. Never fail. Never show fear, never get out of line. It's too hard. It's too contradictory. And nobody gives you a medal or says, thank you. And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.
[END CLIP]
Alex: In this wide ranging interview, we discuss how they got from the creative spark that started it all to the challenges faced in bringing it to the screen. And a quick warning, we will be talking about the story. So if you haven't yet, go see the movie, come back and get listening. This is countdown to the BAFTAs.
[START CLIP]
Gloria: You’re so pretty.
Barbie: I'm not stereotypical Barbie pretty.
Helen Mirren: Note to the filmmakers. Margot Robbie is the wrong person to cast. If you want to make this point.
[END CLIP]
Alex: In this much talked about film Barbie played by Margot Robbie is having the time of her life in the colourful and seemingly perfect world of Barbieland. However, after venturing into the real world with Ken, Ryan Gosling, their ideals begin to unravel as they discover the joys and perils of living among imperfect humans.
Margot: Hi, I'm Margot Robbie. I'm the producer on Barbie.
Alex: Margot Robbie, lovely to be able to talk about Barbie with you. Uh, first of all, let me say, uh, congratulations. How does it feel to have your film recognized by the BAFTA members?
Margot: It's, it's been quite extraordinary actually because the Barbie journey started so long ago and after the summer, I thought I was just gonna hang up all the pink and clear up my wardrobe and never see that colour again. And here we are. We are still. We're still celebrating the movie, which just feels like an extraordinary gift.
Alex: Well, let me take you back to the start of this very long journey with Barbie and, and the first time you actually heard the word Barbie in relation to the possibility of making a film. What, what was that situation? Was it a conversation, a meeting, and, and what was your reaction?
Margot: The first time I heard the word Barbie in relation to a film was hearing about it set up at another studio, and hearing that there was a script, but maybe it wasn't go. And then I heard that that script didn't, you know, it kind of fell apart. And then there was another iteration bubbling, and this is many, many, many years ago.
And so I kind of, when I heard it fall apart, sort of for the second time, I thought, you know, if this doesn't get up, or when it was getting up and running a second time, I thought, if this doesn't go this time, uh, we really should make a move for it. And so we just waited to see if that iteration of the movie would get going and it, and it didn't, which by the way, is completely normal, um, in the developmental process for any film.
You, you, films are almost a thing, and then they're not. It actually feels like a miracle when any movie gets made, because more often than not, it doesn't. Um, so it's definitely not a bad thing. It's just how the, you know. How the game goes. But, we were clocking it by that point.
We were kind of keeping tabs on it at that point, and, uh, waiting for the opportune moment to jump in and throw our hat in the ring and say, can we, can we have a go at making a Barbie movie?
And so by 2018, that moment arose and we sat with, uh, Enon, who was the new CEO, real life CEO at Mattel, even though Will Ferrell depicts the CEO of Mattel in our film, uh, he's actually nothing like Enon.
Enon is actually a lot more like the Terminator. Greta and I used to call him, uh, before we knew him well enough to tell him that we thought he looks like the Terminator. But, uh, yeah, it was that, that was five and a half years ago that we had that meeting.
Alex: So in this process of, of monitoring that, the status of Barbie and being ready to, for want of a better expression, ready to pounce on that property, um, what was the thinking that was going through your head? Cause you clearly knew at that stage there was something about this property that was going to be a success, I imagine that was going to connect with audiences to want to make it.
Margot: It was just a clearly a huge opportunity. The word itself is, iconography. The word itself is globally recognized and is well known, you know, across the world as something like Coca-Cola. It's, it doesn't even really compare to another, you know, character IP that exists. It's, it's even bigger than that. So the opportunity for the outreach it could have was completely evident to us from the beginning, but more so on a creative level, the opportunity to take. A thing that people already had so many feelings about.
But it doesn't have a narrative story yet. There is no, if it's a comic book character or a Disney character, you kind of know the things that need to happen, the folklore that needs to occur in order for that character to become the character that everyone knows.
But with Barbie, there was nothing, and that felt like a big opportunity for a writer and a director to take that lane and, and drive down it. But also it just had so much baggage, which felt very scary and very exciting.
I was extremely aware of how much bad press Barbie's gotten over the years and, and yet she's still so adored and celebrated by some people. And other people, moms in particular, feel extremely conflicted about Barbie. Feminists feel conflicted about Barbie. Um, it just felt like a really exciting opportunity to say something and do something that could reach so many people.
Alex: Uh, and the person you, you felt, uh, is best placed to, uh, to tackle this project initially as, as writer before she became director was, was Greta Gerwig. And obviously, as well as being a talented writer and director as the producer of Barbie. Are you also thinking about the fact that the idea of a, an indie filmmaker like Greta Gerwig tackling a property like Barbie, it already generates a certain amount of excitement and intrigue?
Margot: Totally. Totally. And I, I by the way, always saw her as directing this. Um, she herself wanted to take it one step at a time, write it first, then decide if it was directed. I always wanted her to direct this. I didn't even bank on the fact that she'd dragged Noah into writing this. That was I, um, you know, just lucky for us that she said, this is what I wanna do this with Noah.
But, um, why Greta? I think I could identify in her very first film, Lady Bird, because actually when I started speaking to her, Little Women hadn't come out yet. But it was so clear in that film that here is a filmmaker who has a point of view on the world and who pours a lot of herself and her own experiences into her films.
And it feels, so personal. That movie feels so personal to me. And yet it also kind of fits into that, you know, I don't wanna say conventional because that movie's really not conventional, but there's like a, a movie structure and there's movie notes that you hit that are, but that thing that we all love about movies.
And I could see her hitting all those things, um, in that film, but it was still this exceptionally personal, you know indie film and, and I loved that. I loved how much heart was in that film. I loved how smart it was. I loved how relevant it felt like. It just felt like it was made by a young person, to be honest.
And then in speaking to her, which I had been doing for a number of years, cause I wanted to work with her for a while. It was so clear that she had the, the ambition and the knowledge to execute on a much larger scale. And this obviously was gonna be a large scale movie. And I think you kind of have to clock a filmmaker's ambition for scale when having those kind of conversations because not everyone, does kind of have the skillset to, to work at that kind of scale.
It is a totally different skillset to make a, a big, big blockbuster movie. Um, and, and she clearly. It was so clear. She, I mean, she could do anything. She just gives you that impression when you talk to her. She's so smart and so brilliant. Her knowledge of film is, is, is insane. Um, and filmmaking techniques, and yet everything feels warm.
Everything feels funny and sharp and inclusive and smart and relevant. Just all those things that I knew we needed the Barbie movie to be. She has in spades.
Alex: And I know you were in regular contacts with Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach during the writing process, but when you sat down to read that finished script, there was still a certain amount of trepidation. Talk me through the exact moment and where you were when you first read that script and what your reaction was.
Margot: I was sitting on my couch in my flat in London. When I first read it, Tom and I sat down together. Tom is my husband, but also my producing partner and producer on this film. We sat down at the, the same time I think we made ourselves a drink. It had been a long awaited moment to read this script, because their process is to go off and write the whole thing and then show it to you.
So we didn't really know what was coming. We knew a little bit. Throughout Covid they'd been writing the script and we would have a lot of zoom sessions and they would kind of, test material on us. The way a standup comedian, if you've ever spoken to a standup comedian, you kind of feel like they're testing material on you.
It was that thing where they'd be like, we're thinking this. And then, you know, and Noah would be like, yeah, it's kind of like, and then he'd do a bit, and then Greta would be like, yeah, and it's like that. And they'd kind of one up each other with the humour and you could see them finding a scene. And then you could see one of them start writing it down.
And then eventually, of course we'd see the beach off joke in, in the script, or you know, one of the first, she's like something to do with a Birkenstock and I feel like it's a Birkenstock or a high heel. So there's things like that that she had. They had both kind of tested on us and spoke about in front of us and, and noodled on, but we didn't really know what it was gonna be.
It wasn't the, you know, like the process it is like it is with so many other writers, where you get a treatment and then you get a, you know, a more, a more extended 30 page treatment and then you get a, you know. That so you know what's coming usually. But we really didn't know what was coming and uh, we sat there and we laughed and we cried and we gasped.
Mainly we were just like, had our head in our hands like, oh my God, how are we gonna make this? How are we gonna convince them to make it? By the end of it, honestly, we both looked at each other and said, they're gonna let us make it
[START CLIP]
Ken: And those mini fridges are so small.
Barbie: Mm-Hmm.
Ken: You can only fit a six pack of them, and the freezers are basically useless.
[END CLIP]
Margot: Like it's been years of this journey already. And, um, that's, it's a brilliant script.
This script is a masterpiece and it's such a shame that it will never see the light of day because there is no way we can convince Warner Bros and Mattel, to let us make this movie. It was too crazy. It was, it was bonkers. It was shock of luck full of ideas and different brands of humour and comedy and I mean, the scale isn't what necessarily scared us though.
That was also, you know, your, your producer brain is kind of tallying up the costs as you read something and you're going, oh my God, we're gonna. Everything's bespoke in this world, everything's gonna have to be handmade. We're gonna have to build an entire universe by hand at that. That's expensive. , but it wasn't the expense that scared us.
It was just this anarchic feeling of we're gonna say it all. We're gonna do it all. We're really gonna go there. We're gonna make jokes about Mattel and we have to get Mattel to be okay with that. Uh, it, there were so many reasons. Um, and it also just, yeah, it had gender politics. It had, all the things that people in studios and everyone normally goes like, eek, can you just not talk about that?
Can you just kind of shave off those things so that we can sell this everywhere? And, and this movie did need to be sold everywhere. So we were gonna understand that, that, um, that argument from the get go anyway. So that's where I was, that's how I felt reading it. But it was undeniably brilliant.
Alex: And Mattel obviously this, this, this is a company that has never made a movie before. This is their first movie. I mean obviously you did convince them. Um, tell me how difficult that was. Was it, was there something in this movie that we've all watched that was particularly difficult to get over the line with Mattel?
Or was there even something perhaps that they, they wouldn't budge on? Is there something that we have, have never seen in Barbie because they went, look, we do have to draw a line in the sand.
Margot: There's nothing that they wouldn't budge on. I, I mean, all the credit to them, they, everything was a conversation. And I have to say, the fact that they'd never made a movie before worked in our favour in so many ways. But there was definitely a, a process of understanding that needed to occur. Uh, even just explaining subtext, you know, even they would say, here, Barbie's saying this on the screen, but.
And, and I'd be like, yeah, but this is how I'm gonna play it. And then I'd do it, and then I'd be like, you see how though the words that are coming my outta my mouth are this, my face is telling you that I don't think that. They're like, oh, okay. So there'd be conversations like that where you just don't have those conversation conversations normally, you know, with people who've made movies before.
So that was kind of like a really fun, beautiful, uh, bonding experience. And then everything else was, was, was a conversation. We were just really open and honest with each other, like, what scares you? And of course the list was long. They've worked so hard over the years to rebrand the Barbie universe, and they've done an, like, an amazing job of that.
In 2016, they, it really changed the game by naming every Barbie Barbie and every, Ken Ken,
Alex: Hmm.
Margot: It made the world so diverse and inclusive in that way, and they worked really hard with that rebranding. You can watch an amazing documentary about that called Tiny Shoulders. But here we were hearkening back to, you know, the more derivative things that people found problematic from decades past.
And they were like, well, we don't wanna talk that stuff. We worked so hard to, to fix that. And we're like, I know, but. We have to include all of this. We have to look at all of it, and most of all, we have to be able to poke fun at ourselves. And they were just so brilliant about trusting us and, and voicing their concerns, but always listening to the creative, you know, reason behind a joke or a feeling, or even a name.
Like I remember just. An easy one to, to talk about is the fact that in the script she's called Stereotypical Barbie. And when someone says, are you stereotypical Barbie? My Barbie says, yeah, that's me. I'm stereotypical Barbie. They're like, why? Why does that have to be the word stereotypical?
And I'm like, yes, there's negative baggage attached to the word stereotypical. I, I see that. They're like, right, why can't we call her something else? I'm like, sure, we could call her original Barbie. Um, but the fact that it that she's putting herself in a box and giving herself a derivative name like Stereotypical Barbie is a part of her journey.
It's important that she starts there so that she can end up somewhere else and they would say, okay, yes, I understand that, and I understand the creative impulse behind that, so we're gonna let that one go as well. You know, they were really, really, I mean, I can't credit them enough. They were really amazing about that.
Alex: Uh, obviously, and, uh, they loved it because we are now able to sit and watch Barbie, the, the movie. Let me take you back to the, the moment you walked onto the set of this film for the first time. Obviously a lot of our listeners may never have been on a movie set. Can you talk about what the atmosphere was like on the set of Barbie and, and whether that was particularly unique to this production compared to other films that you've worked on?
Margot: It was unique. It was. Whatever you feel watching the movie, when you see Barbieland and you're at that dance party, times that by a hundred, because that's what the set felt like. It was bursting with joy. It was an instant dopamine hit. You'd walk in and of course we're shooting it in London, and as all the Londoners know, it's often quite rainy and gray and cold, and it was, and then you'd step onto set and it was just, it was Barbieland.
It was this fantastical, warm. You know, pink fever dream. It was just amazing and you couldn't not be happy in Barbie land and people would come to our set from other sets. They were shooting like the Fast 10 and all sorts of other movies. People would wander over and poke their head and be like, what are you guys doing over here?
You couldn't help but be drawn to it. It was just so… Beautiful. And it was so fun. And we'd play mu, you know, Greta would play music, we'd all dance to like get warmed up in the morning, crew, everyone like be dancing. And it was full of laughter. It all trickles down from the top. The fact that Greta would laugh so much meant that everyone else could laugh so much.
And you know, Greta would dance so everyone would dance and it was just the most amazing thing people would come to set on days they weren't even shooting. This set was just warm and lovely and we had such a huge ensemble, in front of the camera every day, which is also pretty rare, so it's a lot for everyone to coordinate, but it was this beautiful chaos and everyone was just having a ball.
Alex: When it comes to, uh, releasing Barbie, now obviously you've got your, you've got your final cut of the film. We hear a lot about, um, the idea of test screenings and, and test audiences, which are, are used often to, to feedback on a film with scores and comments, and sometimes the film is adapted accordingly or sometimes not.
Was that a process you went through with Barbie?
Margot: Yeah, definitely. We tested quite a lot actually. And it was an amazing, amazingly fascinating experience and we test in different parts of the country. We do friends and family, we do recruited screenings. We did recruited screenings where people didn't know they were seeing the Barbie movie we did recruited screenings where people did know they were seeing the Barbie movie.
And so we really got the whole breadth of, of reactions and of course you get people to fill out answers afterwards. Why didn't you like that? What did you think of that? What did you respond to? What are your feelings in general? Um, you know, it gets really detailed and you also film your audience.
And so you can watch your audience react or not react. You can watch when they get restless. You can watch where, when people start eating their popcorn more or getting up to go to the bathroom. That's all really important information. So it does help shape the process to an extent, you also have to be quite careful with that.
You have to also know when to kind of stick to your guns, there's also a lot of moments in this movie that are just pleasurable, even if they don't elicit a big reaction. So even though someone might not be writing, my favourite part was this, or even though the audience isn't, you know, clapping or laughing out loud, we'd always watch for when they were just still.
And like have a half smile on their face because you didn't wanna cut out those moments either. That adds to the whole effect. So yes, we did a lot of testing. It was extremely informative, always fascinating on a, you know, sociological level, just to see the different demographics. However, everyone reacts, teenage boys, I gotta say loved Barbie from the get go.
A demographic that everyone assured us would not see this movie. Actually, their responses were extremely, um, yeah, extremely positive, particularly to Ruth. I remember that reading that teenage boys, particularly around 15, loved Ruth. I don't know if it's like a grandma connection thing, that they, they always put that down as their favourite scenes.
Alex: So in many ways you, you were, you were vindicated. Cause I, I remember you saying that you were, you were having a struggle, you were struggling to convince people that this would be a four quadrant movie right at the start. And uh, and here we are, that congratulations, I guess.
Margot: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that was, I'd say, like the biggest hurdle for sure, because that dictates the budget you're gonna get. It dictates the number you're green lit at, and um, it changes everything. So…to have men show up for this movie was incredibly important to its success. Yeah.
Alex: To take you back to the very first time you watched it with an audience who weren't involved with the film, they weren't a test audience, an audience of strangers, and you're playing your movie for the first time. Talk me through where your head is at, at the start of the titles coming up compared to where you are at the end of that experience. The very first time.
Margot: I was extremely confident that anyone watching this film was gonna enjoy it. I think it's impossible not to enjoy it. I didn't know, uh, there's certain jokes in there. There's certain moments in there, and there's certain characters that I, I was waiting for. Okay, if they go with it on this joke, then they're gonna go with it on these ones.
But if we lose them on that, then we're probably gonna lose 'em on a lot of other things. So it's more about tracking their reactions throughout. I knew everyone would enjoy. You can't, not even, even if you don't care about filmmaking techniques, you can't look at those hand built sets and not know that someone hand built them and not be impressed on some level.
So I was very confident that it would elicit a, a extremely joyful reaction from anyone watching it. But I didn't know, uh, you know, what bits we would lose them. It was, it's always scary. It's always, it's always a scary thing, getting everyone's reactions for the first time. For sure.
Alex: And obviously Barbenheimer was a, a huge thing, a, a, a wonderful thing in cinema. Um. Tell me you picked, uh, well, I dunno whether you picked it, but the 21st of July, obviously famously Christopher Nolan's favoured release date. So when it turns out that Barbie and Oppenheimer are opening on the same day, was there ever before Barbenheimer became a thing?
Any conversations you had where it was like, could you move the date, might you move the date? You know, these are two big movies coming out on the same day. Was that ever brought up?
Margot: Yeah, look. Picking a date is a huge thing. It's a huge thing. There's reasons why Nolan has his favourite date. Everyone has their, you know, it, it's a really, really big deal, and it depends on the kind of film you have. We knew this needed to be a summer release film and that summer period is shocker block full of big films.
So there is no good date. Every date is full. Every date is competing with another humongous movie that tons of people wanna see. We thought it complimented Oppenheimer really nicely. Turns out the world agreed with us, but we always thought that's a, that's a nice movie to be in the same weekend with.
They're, they're very different. , it doesn't feel like we're kind of standing on each other's toes. Um, and what wonderful competition to be in. Actually there's even some people would think two or three weeks before that might be the best date.
You've got more. It's all about the multiple. It's all about when you pick a date and people have the most opportunity to go back to the cinema. That's when you get higher box office. But, uh, it depends how many holidays you've got coming up. So actually the weekend that The Flash had a few weeks before us, which also a Warner Brothers film, uh, and Top Gun was released on that date the previous year.
That, that was a very appealing date, but The Flash was there, so we couldn't do that one. And then we thought, well this is, this is a great date and there's a lot of science, a lot of very clever people and marketing distribution go in, you know, talk at great length about what date to pick, and that is the date that they thought would be best for Barbie.
And we absolutely agreed.
And funnily enough, it was exactly to the day, a year after we wrapped, we had our wrap party on July 21st, and we released the movie on July 21st.
Alex: It was ordained. You were never, you were never gonna move it there. No one did, like, no, no one could move up.
Margot: No, no, no. We were never gonna move it. No, no way. And I'm, I'm, I'm friends with Chuck Roven, who's a producer on Oppenheimer. We talked about this and I was like, we're not moving. We're not moving.
Alex: Well, really, he was like, do you wanna move? No.
Margot: Yeah. He, no, he was like, you should move. You should move. And I was like, I'm not moving. You move, you move Chuck. And he was like, no, we're not moving. We like our date. And I was like, let's get together, it will be great, it’s a perfect bill.
Alex: What does the success of Barbie tell you, uh, about the appetite of movie audiences, um, from the last year and, and moving forward? Does it tell you anything? Can you see a, a, a sea change in perhaps what people are wanting to see at the cinema?
Margot: Yes. Original content. I mean, it's, it's so… Evident that the biggest successes we've had at, at Lucky Chap have been big, bold, original ideas. I, Tonya, obviously a smaller scale film that is a bold tone and that is an very original film, you know, Promising Young Woman, again, completely original Saltburn.
Original. Barbie. Original. Oppenheimer. You know, like it's, it's big, bold, cinematic filmmaking. That's original, that's someone doing something different and people really respond to that. And people, people showing up at the cinema. I can't tell you how important that is for our industry. Like it's, it, it makes the world of difference that people can point at Barbie and say, look what it made.
Look how many people showed up on the same weekend that they also showed up for another big movie. You know, it's, it's huge. It's huge. It literally changes the framework of the game that we're all playing in.
Alex: Uh, we are almost out of time, unfortunately. Margot. Uh, but befo,
Margot: Oh it went so fast.
Alex: before you go, I do have a, I do have a, a a three very quick fire questions just to wrap up our interview. Uh, so the first quick fire question is, uh, can you remember what was your favourite day, either on the set or during the edit of Barbie?
Margot: Oh my gosh, there was so many. Probably when Ryan Gosling played the guitar at me. That was really exciting for me. That was, and then all the Ken’s are playing the guitar, that was maybe one of my favourites. And during the edit. I think it's the first time you feel the movie really click into place.
cause there's always a scary period where you're still trying to find it and you start thinking, oh my gosh, what if we don't find it? And then one day you watch the cut and you're like, there it is. I can see it. Now we've gotta, you know, fine tune and keep sculpting it. But it's there. We've got the movie now.
Alex: Okay. Conversely, um, was there a particularly challenging day on Barbie as, as the producer? Was there a a, a day that you sort of go, that was a tough day in the making of this film?
Margot: Yeah, there were, it was really hard when we got to the real world stuff. So we did three weeks of shooting in LA in the real world. And just logistically the, that was really difficult because we were shooting in a very exposed part of Venice on the boardwalk. Uh, we had a hundreds, hundreds of people flocking to to watch.
They're in the background of the shop because we can't clear you. You know, no matter what permits you get, you can't clear all of Venice boardwalks. So, uh, people's reactions in the back background are shot us sometimes real people's reactions, which, which worked for us because we were meant to look like weird aliens that have just arrived from the boardwalk.
And Ryan and I looked, um, insane, uh, which was mortifying for us, but, uh, captured wonderful reactions, which from everyone else. But yeah, that logistically, that was like, that was scary. And we, we were contending with light, uh, getting all, you know, it was a, it was a lot of work to do all the real world stuff in three weeks being light dependent and out exposed to the elements and all that.
Yeah. That, that was tricky. And it was my birthday. It was my birthday that day as well. Yeah.
Alex: So that was, that must have been a, a, a nice twist. I mean, obviously a, a, a, a ton of people ruining the shop, but it's your birthday, it's, you know, the yin and yang, the yin and yang of life.
Uh, Margo, it's been a pleasure talking to you about Barbie. Uh, thank you for your time and again, congratulations.
Margot: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Alex: My thanks to Margot Robbie and of course to you for listening.
Alex: Follow the podcast to explore the rest of the nominees and much more in the months to come. Thanks too to the producers of this series, Matt Hill and Ollie Piet at Rethink Audio with Sound design by Peregrine Pez Andrews. I'm Alex Zane.
This was a BAFTA production. I'll see you again as the countdown to the EE BAFTA Film Awards 2024 continues.
