The "Barbie" craze is in full swing since the movie premiered on July 21. But for the actors pining to be involved in the film, the pandemonium actually began in 2021, when the movie's casting directors began looking for talent.
Lucy Bevan and Allison Jones, the casting directors behind "Barbie," shared with Vanity Fair many performers were keen to work with director Greta Gerwig, but due to COVID-19 restrictions, the actors had to spend three months in London.
The logistics of spending months in the U.K., where most of the movie was filmed, meant Bowen Yang, Dan Levy and Ben Platt couldn't sign on to the film, Bevan and Jones said.
"They were, I’m not kidding, really bummed they couldn’t do it," Jones said.
Actors were even heartbroken over having to pass on the role of Allan, a one-off doll marketed as a friend of Ken. (Michael Cera ended up with the role.)
"Dear, dear Jonathan Groff was like, 'I can’t believe I’m typing this, but I can’t do Allan,'" Jones said.
Bevan and Jones said the actors who were available took their auditions very seriously.
"Simu Liu was dying to be a Ken, God bless him," Jones said, adding that many of the actors sent in self-tapes and did readings over Zoom due to COVID-19 restrictions.
But what mattered most to Gerwig was speaking to the actors themselves before she even sent over the script.
"She really wanted to get to know them as people. That was very important to her. On the key Barbie and Ken roles, she got a very good idea of what an actor was like from talking to them," Bevan said.
Even before a performer's audition, Bevan and Jones said they knew they would be looking for actors with a certain sense of naivety to excel in the movie.
"We needed actors who could get the fact that our Barbies only knew pleasant things," Jones said, adding the dolls needed to be "pure in thought and pure in emotion."
The group of Kens in particular showed the wide range of emotion and personalities needed across the dolls, Bevan and Jones said.
"They were definitely really different, but they had to feel like a cohesive group," Bevan said. "You wanted to cast people who were really going to get on and be great and enjoy it."
And the Kens were enjoying it by the time filming started — "it" being the campy beach battles, choreographed dance sequences and, of course, living it up in the Mojo Dojo Casa House.
But the enthusiasm started long before the Kens moved in to Barbie Land — Bevan and Jones said several potential Kens wanted to audition shirtless.
"We were like, 'No, no, it’s not about that. You don’t have to do that,'" Bevan said.
