Barbie's Margot Robbie Reveals The Real-Life Inspiration Behind Her Character
Playing the most famous doll of all time was quite a challenge for Margot Robbie ... but luckily, her director, Greta Gerwig, was there to help.
During this season of Variety's "Actors on Actors" series, Robbie, who starred in the summer blockbuster "Barbie," sat down with "Oppenheimer" star Cillian Murphy and revealed that it was really hard for her to get a handle on her character. "I went to Greta, like, 'Help me. I don't know where to start with this character,'" she admitted to Murphy. "And she's like, 'OK, what are you scared of?' And I was like, 'I don't want her to seem dumb and ditzy, but she's also not meant to know anything. She's meant to be completely naive and ignorant.'"
Robbie then told Murphy something fascinating: Gerwig, who co-wrote the "Barbie" script with her partner, Noah Baumbach, had a very specific reference in mind — an episode of NPR's legendary podcast "This American Life," which shares stories from all over the country. Gerwig pointed Robbie toward an episode titled "What Lies Beneath," and that's what helped the Oscar nominee with her process. "And Greta found this episode [...] where it was a woman who can't introspect, who doesn't have the voice in her head that's constantly narrating life the way we all do," Robbie said. "This woman's got a Ph.D. and is extremely smart, but just doesn't have that internal monologue."
Margot Robbie frequently uses animals as inspiration for her performances
Margot Robbie usually has a surefire way to connect with her characters — using animals as inspiration — but it didn't work this time. For her role as Tonya Harding in "I, Tonya," she brought the physicality of a pitbull to the character ... but whenever Tonya got onto the ice and started skating, she channeled a graceful mustang. As Nellie in "Babylon," Robbie had to fight a snake, and she watched videos of honey badgers fighting the reptiles to get a feel for the character. However, as she told Cillian Murphy, that didn't click for her when it came to her role as Barbie.
"It was so weird prepping Barbie as a character," Robbie said. "All my usual tools didn't apply for this character. I work with an acting coach, and I work with a dialect coach, and I work with a movement coach, and I read everything, and I watch all the things. I rely on animal work a lot. I was maybe 45 minutes into pretending to be a flamingo or whatever, and I was suddenly like, 'It's not working.'"
Ultimately, Margot Robbie absolutely captured the essence of Barbie
Even though her usual animal-related acting tactics didn't work, there's no question that Margot Robbie not only figured out how to play Barbie but also delivered a pitch-perfect performance. Introduced as the movie's Stereotypical Barbie, Robbie's take on the doll lives a perfect, idyllic life until she finds herself amid an existential crisis, developing cellulite and experiencing irrepressible thoughts of death. When she seeks counsel from the exiled Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), Barbie learns that she has to go to the real world and find the depressed person playing with her so that she can return to her blissfully unaware life, and off she goes, with Ken (Ryan Gosling) in tow.
Being a woman, Barbie discovers, is full of contradictions and difficulties — a fact that's plainly spelled out by Gloria's (America Ferrera) speech in the movie's third act. That doesn't deter her from seeking more fulfillment, though; as she tells her creator, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), she wants to become the person who comes up with the ideas, and not just the idea itself. At the end of Greta Gerwig's story, Robbie's Barbie is a real woman with flat feet and an upcoming doctor's appointment, and she's filled with glee. It's a testament to Robbie's talent and perseverance that, throughout the film, she instills Barbie with real passion, joy, pain, and hesitation as the character grows from a doll to a human being.
"Barbie" is available to rent on major platforms now.