America Ferrera says the movie ‘Barbie’ is “an opportunity to change history”.
“Greta’s vision is epic, the artistic mastery in this film is just incredible,” said the actress in an interview about the film; learn what role she plays.
One of the first names that stand out in the poster of the new Barbie movie is that of America Ferrera. Since the participation of the Honduran-born actress of Ugly Betty and How to Train Your Dragon was announced, fans wondered what her character would be and if she was a fan of these dolls since she was a little girl.
“The truth is no, I never played with Barbies as a child,” Ferrera said in a recent interview via video call from Los Angeles. “For a lot of reasons, they weren’t cheap, and also, I don’t know, I kind of didn’t feel represented in that world.”
But what made her say yes to the project starring Australian actress Margot Robbie and Canadian Ryan Gosling, directed by American filmmaker Greta Gerwig, was an opportunity to “change history,” she said.
“To represent more of us in the Barbie story, which is so influential, so dominant in our culture,” she added. “And it was also Greta and Margot, I’ve been a fan of them for a long time and they’re both so smart, they think so much and I knew they had a perspective for this Barbie icon.”
America Ferrera’s Barbie character
In the film, which opens July 20, Ferrera plays Gloria, an executive at Mattel, the company that in real life makes Barbies. Gloria used to play with the dolls and her daughter, but things have changed.
“As a mom I felt that relationship very deeply,” Ferrera noted about this aspect of her character. “That’s part of the pain too, that her daughter had something that connected her and allowed her to be imaginative and playful and now her daughter is growing up in a way that she’s leaving that world behind.”
Actually, it seems that Gloria is the one who is not so ready to leave Barbie’s pink cloud, where everything is happiness and harmony.
“She’s connected to it (Barbie), but she’s hiding it, because it’s not something she allows herself to love as a grown woman who wants to be taken seriously and seen as mature, focused and professional,” Ferrera said. “And that’s not perfect either and her journey is to give herself more and more
permission to be all that she is, that we can still connect with our playful side, our creativity, our imagination, our desire to dress up in special ways and express ourselves. You can be that and at the same time be a professional woman.”
“Greta’s vision is epic.”
Ferrera, who recently visited Mexico City to parade down the film’s pink carpet alongside Robbie and Gosling, noted that she was guided by Gerwig, filmmaker of such films as Lady Bird and Little Women to enter Barbieland, the land where Barbies live.
“Greta’s vision is epic, the artistic mastery in this film is just incredible, everything from the costumes, hair, makeup, the sets, the props, every little detail was so much thought,” Ferrera said. “The script was so smart, so funny, so honest, more meaningful than what you would expect from a Barbie movie. For me, it was saying yes to her vision and trusting her.”
Above all, Ferrera felt very much at home sporting clothes from this iconic doll.
“I love having those sequences where I was wearing the same things Barbie was wearing,” she noted. “I never imagined that one day I would be in a Barbie movie, dressed in Barbie’s clothes, but it was so much fun and I loved it.”