Hollywood star Margot Robbie says she would have turned down the Barbie film if it wasn’t for “doll diversity”.
The Aussie actress said she did not want to create a single image of “what Barbie is” and have it be “what women should aspire to be and look like”.
Robbie stars as the title character in the forthcoming summer blockbuster alongside Ryan Gosling, and a diverse cast that includes Issa Rae, America Ferrera, Emma Mackey, Ncuti Gatwa, and Dua Lipa.
The film will see Barbie leaving the utopian Barbie Land after questioning her mortality. She then travels to the real world with Gosling’s Ken.
Speaking to Time magazine, the actress said that she and director Greta Gerwig had told Mattel’s chief executive Ynon Kreiz that the film had to “acknowledge certain things”.
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“In that very first meeting, we impressed upon Ynon we are going to honour the legacy of your brand, but if we don’t acknowledge certain things — if we don’t say it, someone else is going to say it,” she said.
“So you might as well be a part of that conversation.”
She added: “If (Mattel) hadn’t made that change to have a multiplicity of Barbies, I don’t think I would have wanted to attempt to make a Barbie film.
“I don’t think you should say, ‘This is the one version of what Barbie is, and that’s what women should aspire to be and look like and act like’.”
Barbie is produced by Robbie’s company LuckyChap.
According to Time, at one point during filming, Richard Dickson, chief operating officer and president of Mattel, took a flight to the London set to argue with Gerwig and Robbie over a particular scene, which he felt was off-brand.
The pair changed his mind after demonstrating the “nuance” that was not evident in the script, Robbie told the publication.
She also admitted that when she had first read the script, she had had doubts the company would allow the film to proceed.