Three scenes from the Barbie movie that Mattel wanted to cut out

Simon Kelly

Won’t somebody think of the Mattel executives!

By now, almost all of us have seen the Barbie movie, inarguably the biggest movie of the year. If you haven’t, well, you should really get on it.

Since its release in July the film has become a cultural revelation, with some iconic scenes throughout the Greta Gerwig-directed flick.

However, if it was up to the executives at Mattel, some of those scenes might never have seen the light of day, and the world would have been worse off as a result.

In an interview with screenwriter Tony Kushner, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach opened up about their relationship with Mattel and how certain scenes led to some questions from the Barbie creators.

Greta Gerwig will be submitted for Oscar consideration in the Best Director category for #Barbie pic.twitter.com/zZuivlMcJY

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) October 31, 2023

Three scenes that Mattel took issue with in Barbie

The first of the three scenes is probably the easiest to see why Mattel took issue with it, because it involves one of their fictional executives being shot. In the scene involving the beach battle between the Kens and the Mattel execs, led by Will Ferrell’s fictional CEO, a nameless employee gets shot with a bow & arrow.

“There was a note when we first turned the script it,” Baumbach said. “On page 111: ‘Does a Mattel executive have to be shot?’ At the time we were like, that should just be on the ad!”

Gerwig added that “all the notes had a question mark at the end”, stressing that Mattel really did give them the freedom to satirize the company as they sought fit. “It wasn’t like, ‘This has to happen.’ It was more, ‘But does he have to be?'”

Secondly, Mattel had some questions around the scene where teenager Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt, calls Barbie a fascist. COO Richard Dickson actually flew over to take issue with Gerwig and lead actress Margot Robbie, where he pointed out that it was off-brand. However, they convinced him to leave the scene in after performing it live on set.

The final issue is probably the least understandable from an audience point of view – it refers to the scene where Barbie meets an elderly woman (Ann Roth) on a bench and tells her she’s beautiful. It’s fairly innocuous, but Mattel execs thought it didn’t add much to the over-arching story.

“I love that scene so much,” Gerwig said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “And the older woman on the bench is the costume designer Ann Roth. She’s a legend. It’s a cul-de-sac of a moment, in a way — it doesn’t lead anywhere.” She pointed out that despite the scene leading nowhere, it perfectly encapsulates what the movie is about.

“That’s how I saw it. To me, this is the heart of the movie,” she continued. “The way Margot plays that moment is so gentle and so unforced. There’s the more outrageous elements in the movie that people say, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe Mattel let you do this,’ or, ‘I can’t believe Warner Bros. let you do this.’ But to me, the part that I can’t believe that is still in the movie is this little cul-de-sac that doesn’t lead anywhere — except for, it’s the heart of the movie.”