For months, we’ve been wondering what in the world is going on with Greta Gerwig’s increasingly bananas Barbie film, but perhaps we should have been saying “worlds” instead.
While mingling at the Cannes Film Festival this week, New York Times pop culture reporter Kyle Buchanan says he heard some piping hot gossip about the project that changes everything we know about the film so far (which, to be fair, is very little).
We already knew that Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling were slated to play Barbie and Ken, but if Buchanan’s buzz is to be believed, they’re not the only ones who will be stepping into the dolls’ tiny plastic shoes. According to the reporter, several members of the overloaded cast — which includes Hari Nef, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Simu Liu, Michael Cera, and Ncuti Gatwa — play different versions of the iconic dolls, with Nef and Rae as additional Barbies.
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We’ve always got to take Hollywood rumors with a heap of salt, but honestly, this just makes the most sense given what we already know about the project, which Gerwig co-wrote with her partner, Marriage Story writer/director Noah Baumbach. Why would you cast so many leading actors unless they’re all playing the lead? That’s at least one mystery solved.
But we’re not taking down the red push pins from our conspiracy cork board just yet. We still don’t know how Gerwig’s going to jam all these Barbies and Kens into one place. Are we about to go on another multiverse-hopping adventure, as Robbie discovers there’s a version of her for every doll-loving kid in existence? Will this be the film’s not-so-subtle way of having its cake (casting Robbie and Gosling as the white-default dolls) while also acknowledging how widely the Barbie toy line has expanded in body types and skin tones since its creation? Or will it actually go deeper with the “multiple Barbies” concept, marking the first chapter in a bold new BKCU (Barbie & Ken Cinematic Universe)?
The obvious alternative is a bit more psychologically bizarre, but frankly more compelling: what if Robbie and Gosling live in a Dream House on a street filled with other Dream Houses, each housing a matched Barbie-Ken pair in a curated world of real dolls? (No, not those “real dolls.”) What if this is a Truman Show-esque exploration of identity and the pressure to conform? It was, after all, one of the movies on Robbie’s now-deleted Letterboxd list marked “Watch for Barbie,” as Vulture recently noted.
Is there space to tell a story about voyeurism, beauty, and the American Dream in a two-hour movie based on a billion-dollar toy brand? Please say yes, Greta. We’re begging you. Freak us all the way out. We’re not ready at all for whatever the hell we’re getting into with this, your most ridiculous movie, and it feels so good.
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