Director recalls enjoyment of making highest-grossing film of the year and says she was ‘so moved’ by response
Greta Gerwig has spoken of her “thrill” at the “incredible reaction” to Barbie, her existential comedy and the runaway hit film of the year.
Talking to Succession and Peep Show co-creator Jesse Armstrong at an audience during the London film festival at the BFI Southbank, Gerwig, 40, recalled standing covertly at the back of cinemas in New York during the film’s opening weekend, asking the projectors to “turn up the volume” and being “so moved” by the warmth of audience response.
“The process of making it was just joy,” said Gerwig. “I don’t know if it was the pink or the music but it was just infectious.” Yet the most gratifying aspect, she said, was seeing strangers watch the film and realising that “the song that’s in my heart is in other people’s hearts”.
Barbie stars Margot Robbie as a “stereotypical Barbie” in a hyperreal Barbieland populated by remorselessly cheerful and immaculate dolls and their dim boyfriends, of which Ryan Gosling’s Ken is the key player.
