In promotion of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, which is set for release on July 21, the film’s cast and crew have taken audiences on a tour of the doll’s iconic Dreamhouse.
In the seven-minute video, which features appearances from Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and director Greta Gerwig, among others, viewers get a glimpse of Barbie’s home. It is so detailed and, as the film’s director insisted, beautiful.
Greta said that she “can’t even tell you the [amount] of meetings we’ve had about pink,” which I think became kind of obvious with reports that the production “cleaned out” their paint supplier’s stock of the color.
“We sat with all these different kinds of pinks, and we were like ‘What is the pink, and how do all these pinks interact?’ Because I didn’t want it to be so classy. Like when I was a little girl I like the pinkest, brightest things.” She then compared the shade of white that they used and their palest pink, which, spoiler alert, was not very pale.
Robbie, who plays the title role, spoke about how “incredible” it was walking onto the set for the first time. She said that it was “surreal” because all she had seen beforehand was, of course, the miniature models and drawings of everything.
She commended the team, saying, “Katie [Spencer] has just done the most extraordinary job putting this together. A lot of the things you see are actually handmade.”
Two of the most interesting things, to me, were the refrigerator in the kitchen and Barbie’s wardrobe. Talking about the kitchen, Robbie said that there was a mixture of things that were actually there and computer generated, and there were some decals on glass surfaces so that it would look as it would if everything were actually a Mattel product.
I have so much respect for set designers, set decorators, and everyone else who put their heart and soul into that set after reading and watching how much care they put into this film. It’s truly mesmerizing. I think that this video is a really good indicator of how this film will make us fell as audiences, because watching how the cast and crew talk about it and their inner child shining through is really endearing.
Emma Mackey, who will portray a Barbie with “a Nobel Peace Prize in physics,” said that it was “really special”: “When we first stepped onto this set, we were all just *gaps*, it’s like ‘we’re in the real deal’ – it’s just there in front of us.”
Talking about the inspirations behind how the set would look, Gerwig explained that they wanted to “ground” the film around the 1950s, as that was when Barbie was invented. “1950s soundstage, musicals, Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli, like those kind of wonderfully fake but emotionally artificial spaces.”
She said in another section of the video that she wanted people who watched the film to feel as though they could reach into the screen and touch everything. “[I] so emotionally just remember standing in Toys ‘R’ Us, looking at Barbies with the plastic sheet over it, and everything, and you wanted to take it off and take everything apart, and touch everything.’
Another aspect of the film’s design I found so intriguing was that there are no elements within the film, so no water or fire, which means Barbie doesn’t technically have a shower, though this makes sense because when has a Dreamhouse ever come with running water? Margot also explained how she got her inspiration for Barbie’s showers: “I would just look up the old Radox commercials and try and replicate that.”
From the B float in the pool to the fact that Barbie literally doesn’t walk down the stairs to leave her house and get in the car, instead gliding from an upper floor, this film is so detailed it is unreal.
Honestly, it doesn’t really make sense, and it’s so wild, but my god is it amazing. I wish I could visit the set now, not to mention have Barbie’s wardrobe. I mean, if outfits were to spawn for the next day after I’d done a little twirl to get today’s outfit on, I would not be complaining.
(featured image: Architectural Digest)
