It seems like Barbie has everything — girl power, big laughs, more shades of pink than any of Us knew existed — but director Greta Gerwig had to cut a few things from the massive blockbuster.
Allan’s ‘Jaws’-Inspired Scene
Gerwig filmed a scene that paid tribute to Steven Spielberg‘s classic film. “We did this shot on Allan [Michael Cera] that emulated Jaws,” cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto told Variety in September 2023. “He’s terrified [when] Ken hits a wave and then flies in the air. There’s a moment where the police officer sees someone being eaten in the water.”
Prieto explained that Gerwig “could not stop laughing when we shot it” and “kept asking the video assistant to replay it for her just to laugh.”
Unfortunately, it was one of several moments that ended up on the cutting room floor.
All the Fart Jokes
Gerwig admitted that she and film editor Nick Houy wanted to get several flatulence quips in Barbie, but they just couldn’t to squeeze them in.
“We had like a fart opera in the middle [of Barbie]. I thought it was really funny,” Gerwig recalled on a July 2023 episode of IndieWire‘s “Filmmaker Toolkit” podcast. “And that was not the consensus.”
“It was in the wrong place, too,” Houy added. “We need to work it into a more significant narrative moment next time.”
Gerwig added that she wanted to get fart jokes into Lady Bird or Little Women, but they agreed to scrap the gassy quips “about two-thirds through the edit” each time.
Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet’s Cameos
While Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling starred as the main Barbie and Ken in the film, which hit theaters on Friday, July 21, Gerwig intended to have Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet play small roles. She previously directed the duo in her solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, in 2017 as well as her 2019 remake of Little Women.
“Well, it was always going to have to be a sort of smaller thing because [Ronan] was actually producing at the time, which I am so proud of her for. And of course, it’s brilliant. But it was going to be a specialty cameo,” Gerwig told CinemaBlend in an interview published earlier this month.
Unfortunately, the scheduling didn’t work out for Ronan, and then similar obstacles prevented Chalamet from appearing. “I was also going to do a specialty cameo with Timmy, and both of them couldn’t do it and I was so annoyed. But I love them so much,” Gerwig shared.
Barbie and Ken’s Kiss
Barbie is not a very romantic movie. Though Robbie’s Barbie is dating Gosling’s Ken, the doll would rather have every night be girls night, and neither of them have any idea what Ken is supposed to do if he sleeps over at the Dreamhouse.
However, Gosling revealed that he and Robbie did make an attempt to figure out what a smooch would look like between the two characters.
“It was so funny trying to figure out what their idea of kissing might be,” Gosling told People during the joint interview with Robbie earlier this month. “I’m so glad all of that got cut out.”
Emma Mackey and Margot Robbie’s Lookalike Joke
“I’ve been getting told for years that I look like the girl from Sex Education, who is Emma Mackey,” Robbie told BuzzFeed in early July. “She plays one of the Barbies in the movie pretty much because Greta and I thought it would be funny. We were gonna do this whole joke about us looking similar.”
Mackey looked much more like Robbie when she had blonde hair in the early episodes of the Netflix hit, which debuted in 2019. However, after Mackey returned to her natural brunette locks and framed her face with bangs, the joke didn’t quite land.
“Once we got all dressed up as our Barbies, we were kind of like, ‘We don’t actually look that similar,'” Robbie recalled with a laugh. “Like, when she’s got her brown hair and I’ve got my blonde hair, we don’t look that similar, so we didn’t put that joke in the movie.”
Still, Robbie accepts compliments for Mackey’s work. “When people come up and say, ‘I loved you in Sex Education,’ I just say, ‘Thank you. Thank you so much,’” Robbie said.
While the lookalike joke was ultimately cut from the Barbie movie, Gerwig and Robbie, who served as an executive producer on the film, made it pretty clear that they big Sex Education fans. Mackey’s Netflix costars Ncuti Gatwa and Connor Swindells appear in Barbie as a Ken and a Mattel intern, respectively.
Weird Barbie and Ken’s Scene
In a behind-the-scenes photo released by Warner Bros., Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) is seen lounging in a Dreamhouse pool with Ken happily lays his head in her lap. The photo shows Weird Barbie with a hand on Ken’s bare chest while Gerwig covers her mouth, seemingly holding back laughter. Was Ken going to move on with Weird Barbie? Was Ken going to finally find out what to do at a sleepover? We may never know — but we’d love to find out what was going on in this deleted scene.
While several moments had to end up on the cutting room floor, Gerwig kept the scene that was important to her — a brief moment where Barbie sees an older woman in the real world and tells her she’s beautiful.
“I love that scene so much,” Gerwig told Rolling Stone in an interview published on July 3. “And the older woman on the bench is the costume designer Ann Roth. She’s 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.’”
She added, “That’s how I saw it. To me, this is the heart of the movie. The way Margot plays that moment is so gentle and so unforced. There’s the more outrageous elements in the movie that people say, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe Mattel let you do this,’ or, ‘I can’t believe Warner Bros. let you do this.’ But to me, the part that I can’t believe that is still in the movie is this little cul-de-sac that doesn’t lead anywhere — except for, it’s the heart of the movie.”
More Famous Kens (and a Different Allan)
In addition to a few different Kens, Allan was almost played by Mindhunter star Jonathan Groff rather than Michael Cera. “Dear, dear Jonathan Groff was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m typing this, but I can’t do Allan,’” Jones shared.
Barbie is in theaters now.
