Why Greta Gerwig Was Shocked 'Barbie' Movie 'Got Made'

Greta Gerwig is still in “disbelief” that Barbie got made.

The 40-year-old writer-and-director’s movie about the Mattel doll, which starred Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, was this year’s biggest movie and the filmmaker is still astonished it was greenlit because the script she and Noah Baumbach wrote was so “bananas.”

She told Empire magazine: “I share your disbelief that this ever got made.

“The script we wrote was outlandish and bananas and really just unlike anything else.

“The fact that they signed on even initially was sort of incredible.”

Gerwig acknowledged some parts of her vision for the film were “strange” but she was determined to carry on regardless, even when it took some time to get others on board.

She added: “Then once we were making it, it was totally bold and outrageous, even in the execution.

“When we were first talking to department heads, they said, ‘Oh well, surely we’ll need to shoot in Australia or in California so we can get the beaches.

“And I said, ‘Oh no – everything’s interior. We’re gonna shoot this all inside. They’re all going to be builds.’… I was like, ‘Oh yeah, no, we’re going to have painted skies and fake oceans…’

“In that moment, no-one knows what’s in your head, nobody knows that’s what you want to do.

“It’s such a strange, constructed thing. That was a bold choice.

“There were many moments throughout the making of it that I thought, ‘I just need to keep going. I’ve already committed to so much strangeness on the screen. There’s no walking back now.’"