Greta Gerwig sits down with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett for an episode of SmartLess to dive into Greta's early roots of acting and writing and how the idea of Barbie the movie landed in her lap.
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If you didn't know, Greta initially started off as an actress. Reflecting back on her upbringing in Sacramento, she recalls there being a "really healthy and vibrant theatre community there." She added how she spent a lot of time there and considers the art that she did there to be "the purest" art she's ever created.
While she started off with acting, she mentioned that she always had been a writer but didn't have much of an outlet to write. "I wrote all the homecoming sketches for homecoming rallies like that was my way of sort of being a writer," she said. But it wasn't until taking an acting class at Barnard that a professor suggested she take a playwriting class and Greta says it was "instant" that she realized she had a true passion for playwriting.
As she now does both writing an directing, Greta says "for me the writing process and the directing process are different. They're very separated and I don't really want to direct something until I feel like the script is good and worth doing." She revealed "there's times as a director I knew something as a writer a year ago or six months ago which I don't know anymore and I sort of have to trust the writer part of me."
But how did the idea for a movie about one of the most famous dolls to be played with across generations come about? Greta credits Margot Robbie. "Margot Robbie invited me into this," she said, "so she got the rights and was gonna make it and so she came to me 'would you be interested in writing it,' I must've said 'yes,'" Greta added.
Written at the peak of the COVID pandemic back in March 2020, Greta had no plans on directing the movie too, "I didn't know I was going to direct it until we were done writing the script," she revealed. "And I was like well I really like this and I don't want anyone else to do it."
While writing the script, Greta shared that she knew Ryan Gosling would make the perfect Ken. "In writing it we cast Ryan, we wrote his name into the script and everything," she said.
There's no surprise that a film like this required strenuous planning. "For 'Barbie' in particular I had a very long time working with the production designer... I started talking to the production designer at least a year before we started shooting," Greta shared. "So a lot of the things that got worked out in the movie were things that just came out in tons of meetings."
Listen to the full episode to hear more about Greta's journey into directing and some of her very first projects, now playing on the free Audacy app.
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