In Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, each Barbie in Barbie Land is known as Barbie, they usually all stay in their very own Barbie Dreamhouses. What does it imply to be Barbie? Maybe no one understands the reply higher than Lucy Bevan and Allison Jones, the casting administrators liable for filling the movie’s candy-colored world with an ensemble of Barbies and Kens performed by actors like Alexandra Shipp, Hari Nef, Issa Rae, Simu Liu, and Ncuti Gatwa—as well as, in fact, to Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
Bevan and Jones have been on the lookout for a bunch of actors with totally different backgrounds, physique sorts, and gender identities. All of them needed to be enjoyable and humorous, they usually needed to seize a sure guilelessness. “We would have liked actors who might get the truth that our Barbies solely knew nice issues,” Jones says. So as to promote the notion that day-after-day in Barbie Land is an ideal day—that’s, till it’s very a lot not—the Barbies wanted to be “pure in thought and pure in emotion,” and not using a hint of bitterness or cynicism.
Bevan and Jones began engaged on Barbie within the bleak days of COVID lockdown, roughly a yr into the pandemic. Gerwig reached out to Jones, who forged Girl Chicken and is understood for comedies like The 40-12 months-Previous Virgin and Superbad; in flip, Jones recruited the London-based Bevan, whose CV consists of Belfast and The Batman. “I beloved working with Allison. Allison is the most effective casting individual in comedy there’s ever been,” says Bevan, who’s an organizational powerhouse. On that entrance, Jones says, “I’m horrible and Lucy’s unbelievable.”
Aspiring Barbies and Kens handled auditions as a run-do-not-walk state of affairs, as a result of, per Jones, actors actually wish to work with Gerwig. “Simu Liu was dying to be a Ken, God bless him,” she says. Actors despatched in self-tapes and did readings over Zoom. In sure instances, Gerwig wished to speak to them earlier than sharing the script, early variations of which included illustrations of archival Barbies and Kens. “She actually wished to get to know them as folks. That was crucial to her. On the important thing Barbie and Ken roles, she received an excellent concept of what an actor was like from speaking to them,” says Bevan.
For Bevan and Jones, one main casting shock was Kingsley Ben-Adir, a British actor largely recognized for dramatic roles who revealed his playful aspect through the audition course of. “Not a giant comedy résumé,” says Jones. “It’s at all times a pleasure when you may uncover that anyone is humorous.”
Ben-Adir’s Ken appears candy and a bit of timid, in distinction to Liu’s aggressive Ken, Scott Evans’s bro-y Ken, and Gosling’s fairly insecure Ken. “They have been undoubtedly actually totally different, however they needed to really feel like a cohesive group. You wished to forged individuals who have been actually going to get on and be nice and luxuriate in it,” Bevan says. On this case, “take pleasure in it” means hamming it up in a Ken-on-Ken seashore battle and performing a superbly choreographed Fifties-inspired dance quantity. Of their enthusiasm, a number of potential Kens wished to audition shirtless. “We have been like, ‘No, no, it’s not about that. You don’t have to do this,’” says Bevan.
Due to COVID constraints, Barbie’s forged needed to spend three months in London, the place a lot of the film was shot—a logistical issue, they are saying, that put performers like Bowen Yang, Dan Levy, and Ben Platt out of the operating. “They have been, I’m not kidding, actually bummed they couldn’t do it,” says Jones. Even Allan—bizarre, pale Allan, the one Allan in Barbie Land—was an element that actors have been heartbroken over. “Expensive, pricey Jonathan Groff was like, ‘I can’t consider I’m typing this, however I can’t do Allan,’” says Jones. (Michael Cera, who wound up nabbing the half, is filled with pathos and a want to flee Barbie Land.)
There are not any small roles in Barbie, from John Cena’s temporary second as Mermaid Ken to legendary costume designer Ann Roth’s look as a assured nonagenarian Robbie’s Barbie meets at a bus cease in the actual world. “I are inclined to go for the very expert comedy improv folks whose reactions are priceless, and also you bear in mind them by the entire film,” says Jones, citing Annie Mumolo, Lauren Holt, and Deb Hiett as performers who killed in roles which have only a few traces. For the extra important a part of Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, Bevan and Jones forged Rhea Perlman from a brief checklist. “She was very near the actual girl, which was vital, to floor it in these scenes,” says Bevan.
Speaking about Barbie, Bevan and Jones appeared to be glowing. Jones tells me that the temper in Los Angeles has been gloomy as a result of SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes—earlier than we spoke, she had turned off the telephones and electrical energy at her workplace in anticipation of a protracted break in her casting work—and that the film’s joyfulness felt significantly vital to her on this second. It’s true: Barbie is wise and humorous, an ideal deal with for a weekend afternoon. And its pleasure doesn’t lie in solely understanding nice issues.
