Why The Cast Of Barbie Looks So Familiar

Contains spoilers for "Barbie"

Few films have taken the world by storm like 2023's "Barbie." The Margot Robbie-led live-action movie based on Mattel's toy doll went through a long period of development before the involvement of Academy Award-nominated director Greta Gerwig, who teamed up with Noah Baumbach to pen the script. As the cast got fleshed out with other big names it became clear that "Barbie" was going to be an all-star affair.

The film exceeded expectations when it hit cineplexes in July 2023, with Gerwig's script and direction shining. While A-listers like Robbie and co-star Ryan Gosling get lots of screen time as Barbie and Ken, many of the other characters in the film get moments to shine, too, including recognizable stars like Will Ferrell as the Mattel CEO and Michael Cera as the oft-forgotten Allan. As for the rest of the cast, many of these actors have had successful projects before "Barbie," though few of those can hold a candle to the success that "Barbie" is seeing.

From the various Barbies and Kens in the film to the supporting characters who appear in the "real world," here's where you've seen the cast of "Barbie" before.

Kate McKinnon is most recognizable as a former cast member of "Saturday Night Live." Throughout her tenure on the show, she quickly became one of the most iconic performers to ever grace the halls of 30 Rock. Some of McKinnon's "SNL" highlights include characters like Ms. Rafferty, a woman recounting her undesirable encounters with aliens, and Sheila Sovage, a bar patron who gets hot and heavy with her fellow barflies. 

McKinnon's most memorable moments on "Saturday Night Live" were her impressions, particularly of political figures including Hillary Clinton, Kellyanne Conway, and Robert Mueller. Although McKinnon only recently left "Saturday Night Live" in 2022, she had already started steadily building a film career for herself prior to leaving, with roles in the 2016 "Ghostbusters" reboot as well as comedies like "Rough Night," "The Spy Who Dumped Me," and "Yesterday."

Given her extensive comedy background, as well as her penchant for playing strange characters on "Saturday Night Live," she was the perfect fit for Weird Barbie, the outcast Barbie whom little girls play with too hard. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly on her visual inspiration for Weird Barbie, McKinnon commented, "I just pulled a bunch of pictures off the internet. I think I typed in, like, 'effed up doll.'"

In "Barbie," Simu Liu is one of the more significant Kens in the film, rivaling Ryan Gosling's Ken for Barbie's attention and even engaging in an extravagant, '80s-themed dance battle during the film's climax. For audiences who aren't aware of Liu's prior work, they might have been surprised to see this Ken perform numerous backflips throughout the film, which no other Ken can replicate. However, this is all in a day's work for Simu Liu.

Prior to the mainstream success of "Barbie," Liu was mostly known for appearing in the 2021 Marvel Cinematic Universe film "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings," playing the titular martial artist who is forced to confront his father (Tony Leung), the leader of a vast criminal organization. Liu notably performed as many of his own stunts as possible as Shang-Chi, which was no easy feat to master for the role, as Liu told Entertainment Weekly: "I want to sit here and tell you that I was pretty good at martial arts before. ... But really, my martial arts experience was like backflipping in my backyard when I was a teenager and doing parkour with my friends."

Aside from his work in the world of Marvel, Liu also gained notoriety for starring in the Canadian sitcom "Kim's Convenience" and also appeared in the 2023 romantic drama "One True Loves" opposite Phillipa Soo. However, Liu will likely look back on "Barbie" as a formative experience in his so-far short but promising career in Hollywood.

Issa Rae first gained everybody's attention with her self-produced internet web series "The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl," which was later adapted into the successful HBO comedy "Insecure," created by and starring Rae as a woman navigating social life, romance, and contemporary life for an African-American woman. The series was the recipient of many Emmy nominations and launched Rae into the limelight as one of the most talked-about young creative minds of the 2010s.

"Insecure" concluded its run on HBO in 2021, but Rae has remained busy ever since. In 2020, she flexed her acting range with the romantic drama "The Photograph" and the romantic comedy "The Lovebirds." On the TV side of things, Rae has also appeared in various sketches on HBO's "A Black Lady Sketch Show," which she also executive produces, and hosted "Saturday Night Live" in 2020. More recently, Rae lent her voice to 2023's "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" as Jessica Drew aka Spider-Woman.

In "Barbie," Issa Rae plays President Barbie, who, unlike Margot Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie, becomes victim to the Kens' brainwashing after Gosling's Ken takes over Barbieland. On the film's themes about womanhood, Rae told Girls United, "It's really just up to you about how you want to present and how you want people to see you." Rae also gets one of the more memorable lines in the film, confidently reclaiming Barbieland for the Barbies and calling the Kens "motherf***ers," with her mouth bleeped by the Mattel logo.

America Ferrera has a unique role in "Barbie" compared to most other cast members. Rather than play a resident of Barbieland, Ferrera plays Gloria, a hard-working mother employed as a secretary at Mattel whose existential crisis results in her playing with her daughter's Barbie, creating a dimensional rift that brings Margot Robbie's Barbie into the real world. Ferrera also gets the privilege of delivering perhaps the best monologue in the film, ranting to the Barbies about the contradictory expectations placed on women in the real world. 

Though some audiences may be delightfully surprised by just how much Ferrera steals the show, true fans of the actress have known her strengths for years. Her film debut was in 2002's "Real Women Have Curves," which has been regarded by many to be one of the most influential films of the 2000s for its depiction of Latina women. Since then, Ferrera has starred in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and "The Dry Land" and voices Astrid in the "How to Train Your Dragon" franchise.

Ferrera's breakthrough, however, came by starring in the titular role in ABC's "Ugly Betty," centering on a girl who lacks style but gets employed at a fashion magazine. After running for four seasons before getting canceled in 2010, Ferrera then starred and executive-produced in NBC's sitcom "Superstore" for six seasons as the floor manager of a fictional department store called Cloud 9.

In "Barbie," Alexandra Shipp plays the Nobel Prize-winning Writer Barbie, who is the first Barbie to be cured of the brainwashing from the Kens thanks to Gloria's rant about how unfair the expectations put on women are. According to the actress, being a part of Barbie's world was a dream come true, telling Out about walking onto set for the first time that, "It was so massive and up to scale that the little girl in me started just crying."

That's high praise from Shipp, who has quite a stacked resume for such a young up-and-comer in the world of film. She first gained recognition portraying the singer Aaliyah in the 2014 Lifetime movie "Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B," later making notable appearances in films like NWA biopic "Straight Outta Compton," LGBTQ+ rom-com "Love, Simon," and coming of age drama "Dude" throughout the late 2010s. She also entered the "X-Men" universe as the mutant Storm, previously played by Halle Berry, in the 2016 film "X-Men: Apocalypse," which she reprised in 2019's "Dark Phoenix."

Shipp later received recognition for appearing in the 2021 musical biopic "tick, tick... BOOM!," directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and starring Andrew Garfield as playwright and composer Jonathan Larson. In the film, Shipp plays Susan Wilson, Larson's girlfriend, and sings on the film's musical centerpiece, "30/90."

Emma Mackey's presence in "Barbie" alongside Margot Robbie was a long time coming, considering how much the two actors were told they looked like each other. In fact, there was meant to be a joke referencing their similarity in the film, but according to Robbie, "Once we got all dressed up as our Barbies, we were kind of like, 'We don't look that similar,'" (via Marie Claire). However, Mackey still stands out as Physicist Barbie, though the role in Greta Gerwig's film is another in her steadily increasing resume in Hollywood.

Most audiences came to know Mackey through her role in the Netflix series "Sex Education" portraying Maeve, who runs a sex therapy clinic with the awkward Otis, played by Asa Butterfield. Mackey's performance in the show's second season was notably critically acclaimed, eventually leading to a rich career in film, starting with the 2021 French romance "Eiffel." Mackey also appeared in the 2022 mystery "Death on the Nile," directed by Kenneth Branagh and based on Agatha Christie's novel of the same name.

Also in 2022, Mackey appeared in "Emily," a biopic from Frances O'Connor starring Mackey as writer Emily Brontë, in a performance The New York Times called "mercurial" and "mesmerizing." The further acclaim Mackey received from the film eventually led to her winning the BAFTA Rising Star Award at the British Academy's 2023 award ceremony. So for those who enjoyed Mackey's role in "Barbie," get used to seeing her in the future. 

Kingsley Ben-Adir has had a short yet prosperous career in Hollywood so far, though his experience in performing Shakespearean theatre in the early 2010s has made him a tour de force of an actor. He first rose to mainstream prominence in Seasons Four and Five of the BBC period drama "Peaky Blinders," which was followed up by prominent roles in series like "The OA," "High Fidelity," and "The Comey Rule," the latter of which saw him appear as former President Barack Obama. In film, he appeared in "One Night in Miami...," playing Malcolm X.

Most recently, Ben-Adir has completely stolen the show in the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe series "Secret Invasion," where he stars as Gravik, the leader of a group of rebel Skrulls who seek to take over planet Earth after growing tired of Nick Fury's failed promise to find them a new home somewhere in the galaxy. Although the character of Gravik doesn't appear in the comics, he most closely resembles Kl'rt, the first Skrull behind the supervillain known as Super-Skrull.

However, Ben-Adir's role in "Barbie" is a huge departure from his character in the Marvel universe. Ben-Adir plays a Ken, and like all the other Kens, he's desperate for the attention of Barbies, which coincides with the actor's own desire to be in the film. As he told Variety, "It's very rare that a script like that comes along. So I was like, 'Whatever, whoever is in it, I just want to be on set with those guys and I want to be a part of it.'"

If Scott Evans looks recognizable, that may be because you're mistaking him for his brother, actor Chris Evans, known for his performances as Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as films like "Knives Out" and "The Gray Man." His brother Scott, however, stars in Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" as a Ken who fights for the side of Simu Liu's Ken, while also having some obnoxious thoughts about finance that one of the Barbies tricks him into telling her.

Evans' career began on daytime television, starring in the ABC soap opera "One Life to Live" as Oliver Fish, a police officer whose LGBTQ+ storyline caused some on-set controversy, leading to the replacement of actress Patricia Mauceri due to her religious objections to being involved in the character's storyline. Evans ended up playing the role of Oliver for another two years before he was eventually written out of the show in 2010. 

Since then, Evans has had many successful acting roles, plus a cameo in 2014's "Playing It Cool" starring his brother Chris. In 2020, Evans starred in the dramedy "Almost Love" opposite Augustus Prew and Zoë Chao. However, nothing in the actor's career so far has stacked up to working with Gerwig, which Evans described to Out as being "in a state of panic the entire time, just a huge sense of impostor syndrome, knowing who else was a part of the movie."

Some who went to see "Barbie" may not have recognized Ncuti Gatwa as Ken, but that will soon change. The Rwandan-Scottish actor portrays the goateed Ken who fights alongside Ryan Gosling's Ken and Kingsley Ben-Adir's Ken in the Battle of Kens. Like Ben-Adir, Gatwa got his start in Shakespearean theatre before coming to wider acclaim with his role in "Sex Education," which he starred in alongside "Barbie" co-stars Emma Mackey and Connor Swindells, as well as appearances in "The Last Letter from Your Lover" and BBC series "Stonemouth."

Although his performance as Eric, the best friend of Otis in "Sex Education", won Gatwa a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Actor in Television, his breakthrough role is yet to come. In 2022, it was announced that Gatwa would be succeeding Jodie Whittaker as the latest incarnation of The Doctor in the iconic sci-fi series "Doctor Who." Although he was initially announced to be the Fourteenth Doctor, a surprise twist at the end of Whittaker's final episode showed her Doctor transforming into David Tennant's version of the character, with Gatwa clarified to actually be the Fifteenth Doctor.

Gatwa won't make his debut as The Doctor until a series of anniversary specials in 2023, before the fourteenth season of the sci-fi revival debuts in 2024. Until then, fans will have to catch Gatwa in "Barbie," which he was filming when news broke of his "Doctor Who" casting, prompting a bonding moment between him and "Doctor Who" superfan Ryan Gosling.

Hari Nef is a standout of the "Barbie" cast, playing the role of Dr. Barbie, who also moonlights as a DJ for Barbie's Dreamhouse dance party at the beginning of the movie. However, the role is far from her first breakthrough, as Nef has had a groundbreaking career thus far as both an actress and model. After appearing on the cover of a 2016 issue of Elle, Nef made history as the first openly transgender woman to appear on a mainstream British magazine. 

As an actress, Nef first rose to prominence playing the recurring role of Tante Gittel in the Amazon Prime Video drama "Transparent," centered on a family dealing with the revelation that their patriarch, played by Jeffrey Tambor, is a trans woman. Nef went on to star in other popular shows like "You," "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," and most recently in 2023, the controversial HBO drama series "The Idol," starring Lily-Rose Depp and Abel Tesfaye. 

In the film world, Nef has had many notable appearances since her breakthrough role in "Transparent." In 2018, she appeared in "Assassination Nation" in an ensemble including Suki Waterhouse, Odessa Young, and Abra. She also appeared in the gaming comedy "1Up" as well as Peacock's "Meet Cute." 

Jamie Demetriou first gained notoriety in the U.K. as a comedian, appearing in Phoebe Waller-Bridge's critically-acclaimed 2016 series "Fleabag" as "Bus Rodent." Although Demetriou doesn't sport Bus Rodent's horrid teeth in real life, it was a memorable performance for many, given that the comedian is now asked to reveal his teeth to strangers.

Since his performance in "Fleabag," Demetriou has seen much success in both the U.K. and across the pond. In 2018, he created, co-wrote, and starred in the sitcom "Stath Lets Flats," playing an incompetent London letting agent in a cast that includes his sister, Natasia Demetriou, better known for her role in FX's "What We Do In The Shadows." Demetriou's work in "Stath Lets Flats" netted him a triple win at the BAFTAs in 2020 for writing, performing, and producing.

Demetriou's work has remained extensive since "Stath Lets Flats" ended in 2021. He appeared in Season 1 of the Apple TV+ mystery "The Afterparty" as the forgettable Walt and also appeared in Hulu's "The Great" and TBS's "Miracle Workers." In 2023, he wrote and created a Netflix sketch comedy special titled "A Whole Lifetime with Jamie Demetriou." In "Barbie," Demetriou plays second fiddle to Will Ferrell as the CFO of Mattel — a perfect fit for Demetriou's awkward style of humor.

Though she's still a teenager, Ariana Greenblatt has built up an impressive resume. In "Barbie," she impressed audiences as Sasha, the daughter of America Ferrera's Gloria who is disenchanted by the idea of Barbie and remains critical of Margot Robbie's character until later having a change of heart after she sees Barbie slowly become human. Before that, Greenblatt rose to prominence on the Disney Channel sitcom "Stuck in the Middle" co-starring alongside Jenna Ortega.

Greenblatt transitioned to film quickly after debuting in "Stuck in the Middle," including appearances in "A Bad Moms Christmas," "Love and Monsters," and "In the Heights." She even made her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in 2018's "Avengers: Infinity War," playing a younger version of Zoe Saldana's Gamora during a flashback sequence in which she's adopted by the Mad Titan, Thanos (Josh Brolin).

More recently, Greenblatt also appeared in two sci-fi thrillers: "Awake," starring Gina Rodriguez, and 2023's "65" starring Adam Driver, the latter of which finds the two sharing most of the screen time as the only humans on a strange, remote planet that is actually prehistoric Earth.