I am obsessed with everything and anything about the Barbie movie. The Greta Gerwig flick stars Margot Robbie as Barbie herself but also includes all different versions of the iconic toy, and now, star Emma Mackey (who is known for Sex Education and for how much she looks like Margot Robbie) has opened up about filming. And part of that is sharing stories like this about how the cast of Barbie had a sleepover when filming began, where they played games together.
Yes, you read that correctly: a Barbie sleepover—the stuff many of us dreamed of as kids come to life. Granted, Margot Robbie isn’t really Barbie, but still, a sleepover with Robbie does still sound like the stuff of legends. I hope she went back and is still tattooing people and gave the Barbie cast some tats.
“Right in the beginning, we had a sleepover for the Barbies, which would involve playing games with Scott [Evans] and Ncuti [Gatwa],” Mackey said. “I don’t play games usually, because I get so competitive and angry. But Scott and I were top of the game.” If you know anything about the competitive nature of Scott Evans and his brother Chris Evans, this makes … a lot of sense. The two have a history of scaring each other on social media or playing the game Heads Up and getting aggressive about it, so it isn’t surprising that Evans wanted to win with Mackey.
What this also does is make me beyond excited to see these characters all interact with each other. We don’t know much about the Barbie movie, and we barely know what characters are even in the movie, and that’s fine. We’re still down for it.
The joy of working with Greta Gerwig
What we also learned about the movie is that the stars seem to be having the best time working with director and co-writer Greta Gerwig. Known for her films Lady Bird and the remake of Little Women, Gerwig has become a fave for many film fans, and Barbie just feels like something completely new and different from her other work. It seems as if she’s having so much fun making the movie with this cast.
“She’s everything I could have dreamed of,” Mackey told Empire magazine about working with Gerwig. “She’s so invested and precise, and so childishly delighted by what she’s doing. Scorsese said, ‘Never lose the amateur in you.’ I see Greta behind her monitor laughing, and she’ll reference something very niche and it will make total sense in that moment. Her mind is fizzing all the time. I love being around those kinds of people.”
Mackey isn’t the only one who has praise for Gerwig. Costar Simu Liu told GQ UK, “When you’re doing a scene and it’s working, you hear, ‘HAHAHAHA!’ It’s the best feeling in the world,” Liu said. “If you’re an asshole on a Greta Gerwig set, there’s no hope for you.”
We can’t wait to see whatever Barbie is and if it was just footage of this sleepover, I’d see it twenty times over.
(featured image: Warner Bros.)
