Greta Gerwig Fought to Keep This Iconic Ryan Gosling Scene in ‘Barbie’
Barbie co-writer/director Greta Gerwig dug in when it came to actor Ryan Gosling‘s big dance number, “I’m Just Ken.”
Studio executives questioned the part in the script that indicated: “And then it becomes a dream ballet and they work it out through dance.” Gerwig envisioned that number to mirror the iconic, “Singing in the Rain.” She won her argument with executives but later held her breath, wondering if her gut was right.
‘Barbie’ needed a ‘dream ballet’
Gerwig recalled being summoned into a “big meeting” where she was asked “‘Do you need this?’” she recalled during her Screen Talk at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival (via Variety).
“I was like, ‘Everything in me needs this,'” Gerwig said. “They were like, ‘What do you even mean? What is a dream ballet?’ And I was like, ‘A dream ballet? Where do I begin!'”
The Ryan Gosling Barbie scene in question was set in an empty room filled with Kens dressed in black. Gosling is front and center. They perform a powerful dance sequence after the scene where all the Kens battle each other on the beach.
Greta Gerwig worried Ryan Gosling’s ‘Barbie’ dance would be ‘terrible’
Gerwig held her own. “I was like, ‘If people could follow that in Singin’ in the Rain, I think we’ll be fine. I think people will know what this is,” she said.
Once the dust settled and Gerwig won, she second-guessed herself, hoping she didn’t make the wrong call. “Even though everything felt right to me and was giving me so much joy in the way we were doing it, it was also like, ‘Oh no, this could be just terrible, but now I’m committed,'” she said.
This isn’t the only scene Greta Gerwig had to fight to keep in ‘Barbie’
Ryan Gosling’s Barbie dance number wasn’t Gerwig’s only fight. Executives wanted her to cut the scene where, while in the real world, Barbie sits down at a bus stop next to an old woman. She smiles and tells the woman that she’s beautiful. The woman smiles back and says, “I know.”
“I love that scene so much,” Gerwig told Rolling Stone. “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. 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.’”
“That’s how I saw it. To me, this is the heart of the movie,” she added. “The way Margot [Robbie] 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.”
The scene may have been a one-off but Gerwig felt as though it was important to keep.
