Script to Scene: ‘Barbie’ Screenwriters Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach Break Down a Climactic Moment

“For a long time we called it the ‘God Space,’ ” Greta Gerwig says of the ethereal setting for the conversation between Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and her creator, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman). “What other God does Barbie have?” Gerwig and Noah Baumbach took inspiration from celestial spaces in films like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death and Warren Beatty and Buck Henry’s Heaven Can Wait. 

This scene was more serious than the rest of the comic film, as Barbie’s existential crisis comes to its peak. But Baumbach says the best part of the writing process was making his wife laugh. This soft joke in an otherwise dramatic moment represents a shared philosophy about comedy and drama being one and the same. “I don’t think we really make much distinction between a funny scene or a serious scene,” says Baumbach. “It’s all about humanity and human behavior, and this scene is very much about embracing that.”

“There are a lot of ideas in this movie,” says Gerwig, who describes Barbie as “maximalist” in nature. “She doesn’t choose one accessory and elegantly head out the door.” Something important to her was that the film find grace in the ridiculousness of being human — inventing dolls and the patriarchy, for example. “What sparked the interest in writing the movie came when I started to think about Barbie the object. We think of ourselves as advanced, but we’re still the creatures that make dolls — and then get mad at the dolls.” 

“What if you met God and it was Rhea Perlman, and she tells you that life is hard and then you die?” says Gerwig. “How great would that be, but also how emotional?” 

“As writers, this scene also explains why we chose to write the script for this movie,” says Baumbach. Barbie marked the pair’s third screenwriting collaboration, and the joy in the process came from making each other laugh. “I’ll be chasing that laugh for the rest of my life,” he says of Gerwig, whom he married in December.

This line nearly didn’t make the final cut. “Sometimes a line will be sitting on top of the scene instead of being a part of it,” says Baumbach. Gerwig recalls how she justified it: “Kids love to do the thing where you stand still and time them as they run away from you,” she says. “But I also thought about how when my grandmother was born, she couldn’t even vote. So much changed in my mother’s lifetime, and then in mine. My grandmother passed away before she knew I directed anything. You’re bound by time in that you don’t know [how it will be] for the next generation. You’re standing still because you can’t see the future.”

This story first appeared in the Feb. 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.