When it came to Barbie, director Greta Gerwig stomped on any notion to use CGI to mimic the intensely arched feet featured on the Mattel dolls.
Gerwig appeared alongside the upcoming movie’s star Margot Robbie on the Australian talk show The Project to discuss the film, when one of the show’s hosts began gushing about a particular scene in one of the film’s main trailer. The scene features a close-up of Robbie’s feet stepping out of her plush pink heels onto her tippy toes with seemingly perfectly arched feet.
“I need to know everything,” the host exclaimed. She then began spit-firing the following questions: “Is it you? Is it special effects? Did you get a pedicure? What on Earth is happening?!”
“Ok, let me go through those questions,” Robbie replied. “Yes it is me, no it’s no special effects, you’d be amazed how few [special] effects there are in this film, actually.”
She explained that it only took “a couple takes” to capture, and that the support of a bar to hold onto and double-sided tape to keep her shoes still was enough for some movie magic. Also, for those wondering, Robbie did get a pedicure that morning.
“There was a big discussion in the beginning,” Gerwig revealed. “Everyone said, ‘Are you going to CGI all the feet?’ And I thought, ‘Oh god, no! That’s terrifying! That’s a nightmare.’”
She also noted that Robbie has “has the nicest feet,” ones she described as “beautiful dancer feet.”
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The trailer also depicts how the film follows Robbie’s Barbie into the “RealWorld” and away from Barbie World, where she experiences cold showers, falling off of her roof and her feet touching the ground for the first time.
The two spoke to how meaningful making the film was to them.
“We genuinely just wanted to make something that everyone would just have a great time watching,” Robbie shared.
“[Barbie] is such an icon, but it’s an icon that’s meant so many different things at different moments, but I could feel myself leaning into it and kind of curious about it,” Gerwig explained, ultimately comparing the iconic arched heel and pink heels snapshot to Batman‘s “Bat signal.”
She also shared how the logo of the film is inspired by the logo on the boxes of Barbie dolls she grew up seeing in toy stores in the 80s.
You can catch Barbie and her arched-heel glory in theaters on July 21.
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