While the “I’m Just Ken” dance scene has become one of the Barbie movie’s most iconic moments, director Greta Gerwig had her doubts about its inclusion in the film.
“That sequence, in particular, was just filled with choices that thrilled me and made me so happy, but then I’d be driving home at the end of the day and thinking, ‘Oh no!’” Gerwig, 40, said during a discussion at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday, October 8, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
While the “I’m Just Ken” scene begins with Ryan Gosling and the film’s other Kens fighting against each other on a Barbie Land beach, the number turns into a dream dance sequence set on a blue and pink soundstage, featuring elaborate choreography and lots of “Kenergy.”
Gerwig — who cowrote the Barbie script with her husband, Noah Baumbach — previously stated that it took some coaxing to get Gosling, 42, to sing the number in the film.
“I think if I had said, ‘I want you to sing and dance in this movie,’ he would not have necessarily done that for me,” she told Rolling Stone in July. “But it was kind of that thing of boiling a lobster. I think by the time he was singing and dancing, he didn’t even totally know how we had gotten there. But he’s so fabulous at it.”
On Sunday, Gerwig went on to call the Barbie set “the most joyful” one she’s ever been on, adding, “I thought, if I can make a movie that is half as fun to watch as it was to make, I think maybe we’ve got a shot.”
The Little Women director also revealed that snuck into some screenings during Barbie’s opening weekend to catch people’s reactions to it. “I went around to different theaters and sort of stood in the back, and would then also turn up the volume if I felt it wasn’t playing at the perfect level,” Gerwig noted.
In addition to making over $1 billion at the box office since its July 21 release, Barbie has become the highest-grossing Warner Bros. film of all time. Gerwig has also broken the record for the highest-grossing film made by a solo female director.
However, not all moviegoers have had positive reactions to the flick, which follows Robbie, 33, and Gosling’s Barbie and Ken as they travel to the real world to stop Barbie from malfunctioning. Several controversial critics have called out the movie for being too “woke” and feminist, with some even burning Barbie dolls in protest.
“My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men,” Gerwig said of the backlash in a July interview with The New York Times.
She continued: “Certainly, there’s a lot of passion. I hope that in all of that passion, if they see it or engage with it, it can give them some of the relief that it gave other people.”
