As The Simpsons had repeatedly demonstrated, the identical clashes and controversies really are inclined to resurface within the tradition, making the present seem like it’s written by time vacationers or soothsayers. Weinstein attributes this to any parallels between their script and the brand new Barbie film. “It sounds prefer it’s the trendy reply to questions requested 30 years in the past,” he says.
Because the episode continues, Lisa Simpson seeks out Stacy Lovell, the reclusive creator of Malibu Stacy, hoping that the entrepreneur will hearken to cause and mass produce a plaything with a extra uplifting message. Lisa motivates her by enjoying into her sense of vengeance, since she was way back compelled out of her personal firm. Then Lisa performs on her satisfaction, declaring that the unique doll is modeled on Stacy herself. “I’d be mortified if somebody ever made a awful product with the Simpson identify on it,” Lisa declares, in a sly jab at her personal present’s merchandising enterprise.
To play Stacy Lovell, The Simpsons regarded to the A-list, recruiting Physique Warmth and Romancing the Stone star Kathleen Turner. “David Mirkin was employed to develop into the showrunner,” Oakley says. “I believe he introduced it up within the room and mentioned, ‘How does Kathleen Turner sound?’ And I’m certain we have been like, ‘That is excellent.’
Turner, an Oscar nominee for Peggy Sue Obtained Married, had additionally lent her smoky voice to the animated bombshell Jessica Rabbit in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. She mentioned sure to The Simpsons partly as a result of the story resonated together with her personal upbringing.
Turner’s father was a diplomat with the US Overseas Service, and a few of her childhood was spent in Venezuela, removed from American popular culture and the Barbie craze that overtook her technology. “I didn’t come again to the States till college, so I missed all that growing-up woman shit,” Turner tells Vainness Truthful, in an interview performed earlier than the SAG-AFTRA strike. “However I by no means had dolls. Anytime anyone tried to offer me a doll—which my household stopped attempting to do—all I’d do is rip their heads off. I didn’t need any silly dolls.”
The Teen Discuss Barbie controversy is one Turner had forgotten about till now, though the outline makes her bristle anew. “I hope I did know that then,” she says. “It should have been rage. I should have been so offended.”
The Simpsons intrigued her, however she wasn’t satisfied simply by the provide. A bona fide film star, she hadn’t appeared in a tv sequence because the late Nineteen Seventies, when she received her breakthrough on the cleaning soap opera The Docs. “They requested me, however the very first thing anybody all the time has to do is to ship me a script as a result of I don’t say sure to something with out studying the fabric,” Turner says.
Weinstein and Oakley’s teleplay struck a nerve. “I’ve to say that I actually beloved that present. I actually did,” she recollects. Stacy Lovell was the proper counterweight to Lisa Simpson’s sunny idealism. “Her skepticism, her cynicism, after which being transformed, being compelled by the woman…” Turner says. “It was simply deliciously humorous. And unhappy.”
When Stacy Lovell is lastly received over by the little woman’s insistence, the reclusive toymaker rises from her high-backed chair and hurls a glass stuffed with liquor into the fireside, making a momentary inferno—which shortly flares out. It foreshadows the failure to come back, and the perils of shopping for into hype.
“I imply, the girl was proper. She was a superb businesswoman,” Turner says. “Her saying ‘We received’t promote a single doll’ in fact turns into true.”
