Gal Gadot Shares How She Really Feels After Turning Down Barbie
If you've seen "Barbie," it might feel fully inconceivable that anybody besides Margot Robbie could have ever possibly played the lead role of Stereotypical Barbie. Somebody else nearly did, though, and that somebody is "Wonder Woman" actress Gal Gadot.
As Gadot told Flaunt Magazine, she was Robbie's original choice for the role — Robbie produced the movie through her company LuckyChap Productions, and she initially wanted Gadot to play the part. Thanks to scheduling conflicts over an unnamed film, though, Gadot had to turn it down.
"I adore Margot," Gadot said to Flaunt about nearly working with the actress on Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" movie. "Margot is one of those women who you just want to be friends with. She is so funny, warm, fun and smart and obviously so talented. She brings so much to the table. I would love to do anything with Margot and was very touched [by her comments]. She warmed my heart with everything that she said about me. I'm super excited for them, and I'm so excited for 'Barbie.'"
In a profile in Vogue before "Barbie" was released, Robbie even said that Gadot almost represented Barbie for her. "Gal Gadot is Barbie energy. Because Gal Gadot is so impossibly beautiful, but you don't hate her for being that beautiful, because she's so genuinely sincere, and she's so enthusiastically kind, that it's almost dorky," Robbie told Vogue. "It's like right before being a dork."
Gal Gadot isn't the only person who almost appeared in Barbie
A handful of big names missed their chance to be in the "Barbie" movie thanks to scheduling issues, so Gadot isn't alone. In an interview with Vanity Fair, casting directors Lucy Bevan and Allison Jones revealed that Bowen Yang, Dan Levy, and Ben Platt were all in the running to play various Kens, but none of them could fully commit to spending the entire shoot on location outside of London. "They were, I'm not kidding, really bummed they couldn't do it," Jones told the outlet. Jonathan Groff also very nearly played Ken's "buddy" Allan, who was ultimately played by Michael Cera (in a perfect deadpan performance), but according to Jones, he had to personally reach out and apologize while also turning the role down.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking missed opportunity in "Barbie," though, is that Greta Gerwig regulars Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet were supposed to appear in the film and couldn't make it work. "Well, it was always going to have to be a sort of smaller thing because [Ronan] was actually producing at the time, which I am so proud of her for," Gerwig told CinemaBlend. "And of course, it's brilliant. But it was going to be a specialty cameo." As for Chalamet, Gerwig revealed he couldn't swing it either: "I was also going to do a specialty cameo with Timmy, and both of them couldn't do it and I was so annoyed. But I love them so much."
In the end, Margot Robbie was a pitch-perfect Barbie
No offense to Gal Gadot, but watching "Barbie" makes it clear that Margot Robbie was basically destined to play the role of Barbie. As the movie opens, Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie has a perfect, pink, plastic life in the matriarchal utopia of Barbie Land, but all of that goes awry when she starts thinking about death and watches as she develops cellulite and flat feet. Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) tells her that, in order to figure out what exactly is going on, Barbie will have to head to the real world — where she discovers that the feminist utopia she's wrought in Barbie Land doesn't exist beyond its borders.
Robbie's performance is, without question, pitch-perfect in every way. Before the cracks in her facade appear, she's completely trusting and happy; upon entering the real world, she's hit by a truck full of emotions and even learns how to cry. As Barbie moves further and further away from her idealistic life as a doll — and further towards becoming the human she eventually chooses to be — her hair flattens, her demeanor becomes much more introspective and serious, and it's clear that she's slowly realizing she wants more than a doll's life. Thanks to Robbie's journey throughout the film, the last moment, where Barbie goes to her gynecologist for the very first time, feels completely earned.
"Barbie" is in theaters now.