During her appearance at the BFI London Film Festival’s Screen Talk on Sunday, Greta Gerwig, the director of Barbie, delved into the behind-the-scenes story of Ryan Gosling’s I’m Just Ken dance sequence. She shared that in a pivotal meeting, the question arose as to whether the scene was truly essential to the film.
“It just said in the script, ‘And then it becomes a dream ballet and they work it out through dance,’” Gerwig shared while speaking to Jesse Armstrong. “There was a big meeting that was like, ‘Do you need this?’ And I was like, ‘Everything in me needs this.’ They were like, ‘What do you even mean? What is a dream ballet?’ And I was like, ‘A dream ballet? Where do I begin!’”
Gerwig pointed to Singing in the Rain as a significant influence for the scene, highlighting how the classic movie musical featured a “dream ballet inside of a dream ballet,” which served as a source of inspiration for her.
“I was like, if people can follow that in ‘Singing in the Rain,’ I think we’ll be fine. I think people will know what this is. So that was the big reference point,” she said. “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.’”
After the remarkable achievement of Barbie, Gerwig finds herself in the spotlight. The film has surpassed the impressive milestone of $1 billion in worldwide box office earnings, making it the top-grossing movie of the year so far. Notably, it has also etched its name in history as the highest-grossing film ever directed by a solo female director.
