Barbie's Greta Gerwig had to fight for one of the movie's most heartfelt scenes

News
By published

"The part that I can't believe that is still in the movie is this little cul-de-sac"

Margot Robbie as Barbie in Barbie (2023)
(Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Barbie may be full of outlandish moments and jokes, but Greta Gerwig says the one scene Warner Bros. executives suggested she cut was far from wild. In fact, the director would even go as far to say that it's "the heart of the movie". 

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Gerwig touched on the moment in the film that sees Margot Robbie's Barbie start chatting with a random elderly lady at a bus stop. After getting upset when Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), the teen she suspects is playing with her in the Real World, ridicules her, a tearful Barbie tells the woman, played by costume designer Ann Roth, she's beautiful, to which she replies with a grin, "I know it."

"I love that scene so much," the filmmaker gushed. "Ann Roth [is] a legend. It's a cul-de-sac of a moment, in a way — it doesn't lead anywhere. And in early cuts, looking at the movie, it was suggested, 'Well, you could cut it. And actually, the story would move on just the same.' And I said, 'If I cut the scene, I don't know what this movie is about.' That's how I saw it. To me, this is the heart of the movie.

Out in cinemas now, Barbie sees the titular toy tasked with journeying to the Real World to figure out why she's suddenly not living up to what a stereotypical Barbie should be. There, the plastic gal sets out to discover what true happiness is – and finds her independence along the way. Ken, however, stows away on her trip and wastes no time bringing all the knowledge of the patriarchy he accumulated in the Real World back to Barbieland. Uh oh.

For more on the movie, check out our breakdown of all the Barbie Easter eggs you might have missed or the past Barbie movies that didn't make it to the big screen.

Amy West
Amy West
Entertainment Writer

I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things TV and film across our Total Film and SFX sections. Elsewhere, my words have been published by the likes of Digital Spy, SciFiNow, PinkNews, FANDOM, Radio Times, and Total Film magazine.