She may not be one of the many, many Barbie characters in the film, but that didn’t stop actress America Ferrera from being transported to an emotional place when she arrived for her first day on set.
Ferrera will be playing one of the human characters in the movie, playing Gloria, the assistant to Will Ferrell’s character of the CEO of Mattel (the company that owns Barbie). Despite telling Screen Rant that she didn’t have an affinity with the doll growing up, she couldn’t help but get choked up over the movie.
Whilst talking to ComicBook, the actress was asked if she had been transported back to her childhood at any point during filming, and though her own childhood may not have been Barbie-filled, Ferrera understands how much the character means to so many people.
“What I remember is walking in the first day of filming and it was like the first shot and it was Margot waking up in bed on her perfect day in her heart bed, and I looked at the screen and I just started to cry. It was just like, ‘I can’t believe that it’s this beautiful and that it’s this thoughtful and meaningful and we get this movie about a woman icon for women and it’s like the movie she deserves. It’s the movie we deserve.'”
The character of Barbie is one that has survived through evolution, much like how women have also changed and adapted as we have fought for and earned more freedoms and the right to make our own choices. Ferrera understands that Barbie is not a perfect character, and that she has a slightly contentious history, with many having called out Barbie in the past for promoting an unrealistic body shape and perpetuating a particular white/Eurocentric beauty standard.
Ferrera explains that the film makes room for this with Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie at the helm.
“There’s positives and negatives to her and there is room for all of it in the movie, but that we didn’t just get some low-budget, glossy, couple of bad, outdated jokes thing that moms would’ve taken their kids to see anyway. The fact that this is the version we got where there are layers and layers and layers of artistry, and it’s like, ‘Of course, we deserve movies like this. Of course, our stories and the things we love and value deserve to be treated like this.’ And I’m just so grateful for Margot and for Greta for being the ones to shepherd it.”
With these two powerhouses of Hollywood at the helm, both of whom have been lauded for their work in creating powerful stories centered on women such as Gerwig’s Lady Bird and Little Women as well as the Robbie-produced I, Tonya, Birds of Prey, and Promising Young Woman, we are sure that Barbie goes beyond the superficial and taps into something that we can truly relate to.
We are sure that many of us, like Ferrera, will also get choked up watching Barbie when it arrives in theatres on July 21.