“I just thought: I don’t know how this is going to be good,” says Greta Gerwig’s (writing) partner.
Together with his partner Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach wrote the script for the hit film “Barbie”. At the beginning, however, it took a lot of convincing on Gerwig’s part. Baumbach was anything but enthusiastic about the idea of a Barbie film adaptation and didn’t believe that the film would work.
After Baumbach did not take part in the film’s press tour due to the screenwriters’ union’s strike, he now commented in detail about the work for the first time. In one Interview with director, producer and author Judd Apatow he explained why he initially thought “Barbie” was a “terrible idea.”
“You have to get us out of there.”
“I thought it was a terrible idea, but Greta signed me up for it,” Baumbach said in an interview. Lead actress Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig had already recruited him, meaning he had no real say in the realization of the film adaptation. He continued: “I just thought, I don’t know how this is going to be good. I put it aside for a while, and every time she mentioned it I said, You have to get us out of this. And then the pandemic came.”
Gerwig also recalls how the screenwriter tried to convince her to back out of the film: “There’s no character and no story, so why do you want to do this? There is no entry point,” he allegedly told her. Baumbach also recounted in the Apatow interview how his partner asked him to read through her ideas: “It was Barbie waking up in her dream house, coming into her backyard and meeting someone who was sick and dying. I read these pages and thought: Now I understand what this is. “The film is about embracing mortality and the messiness of it all, so it was exciting,” he says of his epiphany moment.
Most fun ever
The knot seemed to have been broken and the 54-year-old further reported in the conversation how he suddenly felt enthusiastic about the film and even described it as “the most fun the two of them ever had”. He added that even if he initially dislikes things, he is still inclined to agree if Gerwig truly believes in the cause.
“Barbie” was released in German cinemas on July 20, 2023.