Barbie: Why Greta Gerwig Had To Include Disco To Make The Film Work

In the lead-up to its theatrical release, everything we've learned about Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" movie has only served to invite more questions about what this movie even is. Is it a musical? Why is there so much dancing — or is it not as much dancing as we think, when all is said and done? At the very least, we know that, before her existential crisis, Barbie (Margot Robbie) organizes a massive Barbie dance party with "planned choreography and a bespoke song," although she ends up interrupting said choreography and song by asking her friends, "do you guys ever think about dying?"

So what went into creating this enormous dance sequence? According to Gerwig, who discussed it during a roundtable discussion with her cast with Entertainment Weekly, it all came back to disco — which is a huge part of Barbie's story. Disco, as Gerwig puts it, "felt really related to Barbie in its heart because it's so hopeful about people. Disco assumes you want to dance. That's not the assumption that every musical genre makes." 

Oh, and that "bespoke song?" It was crafted for the "Barbie" movie by Dua Lipa, and Gerwig chose her specifically as well. (The artist also plays Mermaid Barbie in the film.) "Dua Lipa makes kind of modern, tragic disco hits," Gerwig says. "She has that ability to write a disco song that's so much fun, but when you actually listen to it, you're like, 'She's sad.'"

Fans who have been eagerly awaiting the release of the "Barbie" movie know that Gerwig was extraordinarily thorough when it came to informing her cast about the movie's major influences; during shooting, they all attended a weekly screening of a film that Gerwig said inspired "Barbie," an event later referred to as "movie church." Along with classics like "His Girl Friday" — which Robbie and Gerwig have both said helped inform the pitter and patter of "Barbie's" dialogue — the gang also watched "Singin' In the Rain" and "Oklahoma!" to see how classic movie musicals also influenced "Barbie." Gerwig told EW that, in the vein of these movie musicals, each dance sequence was meticulously planned in a very unexpected way.

"In terms of how [the actors and dancers] moved and how they behaved, I wanted it to feel heightened, but I didn't want it to feel like a sketch," Gerwig told EW. "In soundstage musicals like 'Oklahoma!' or 'Singin' in the Rain,' there's a quality in the way people move." Gerwig really is a perfectionist... and as a result, every single background performer is a dancer as well. 

"So all the Barbies and Kens you see on the beach [and other dance sequence settings] hold themselves differently," she said. "Our choreographer said dancers, their bodies always have a direction that's different [from] normal people. So that was kind of like in this conception of Barbie Land, it's like a soundstage musical."

Robbie and her Kens, including Ryan Gosling and Simu Liu, knew they'd be participating in the dance sequences — but one actor on "Barbie" was thrown unceremoniously into the action, with Gerwig joking, during the EW roundtable, that Issa Rae may never forgive her. 

As President Barbie, Rae — who you probably know from her HBO show "Insecure" — didn't think she'd have to learn any fancy choreography and ended up surprised by the request. "I just didn't think the president would have to dance," Rae recalled — and not only did she have to be part of the big dance scene, but it took place on her very first day of filming. So, as she remembers, she learned it all really quickly... only to arrive on set and find that it had been almost completely overhauled, and she just had to start from scratch. "I learned it that day and in front of everyone," Rae told EW. "So it was like the first day of school and I was naked."

America Ferrera, who plays not a Barbie but someone from the "real world" who encounters Barbie and Gosling's Ken after they escape Barbie Land, expressed regret that she didn't get to be a part of the dance. This was not an issue, apparently, for "Saturday Night Live" veteran Kate McKinnon, who appears in the film as Weird Barbie. When Gerwig said she was sad that Ferrera and McKinnon didn't get to dance, McKinnon was blunt: "I'm not. I appreciate whenever I'm left out of a dance number, because I find that the worst thing that could happen to me."

"Barbie" dances into theaters on July 21, 2023.