Greta Gerwig was shocked but delighted when people wore pink to see ‘Barbie’.
The 40-year-old filmmaker had no idea audiences would be so celebratory about seeing the film – which stars Margot Robbie as the Mattel doll opposite Ryan Gosling as Ken – but she loved how it contributed to the movie becoming a global phenomenon.
She told Empire magazine: “The pink part – I have to say that was totally organic and not something I could have anticipated.
“I didn’t know people were going to do it.
“And they’re dressing up, they’re showing up en masse in pink.
“I live in New York and I saw all these people walking around in pink in my neighbourhood.
“It just felt amazing.
“And then I see men wearing pink and I was like, ‘They all went to ‘Barbie’. It was just very sweet.
“My son, who’s four, said, ‘Mom, there are a lot of Barbies here today.’
“He’s not seen the movie, he doesn’t know what that means. But he has an idea of it.
“Also, as a lover of movies, the fact that movies were at the centre of a global conversation was extraordinary.”
Greta revealed one of her biggest “secret hopes” for the movie was that people would cry at the end, during the conversation between Barbie and her creator, Ruth Handler, who was played by Rhea Perlman.
She said: “I had this secret hope for the movie that you might find yourself unexpectedly crying and not knowing why.
“All of the images you see, when Ruth says, ‘Take my hands… Now close your eyes… Now feel’, those were all images that were submitted by the cast and crew who made ‘Barbie’ – people’s sisters and wives and mothers and aunts and daughters.
“It was just these snapshots of life.
“You don’t know that, but also I believe that audiences feel that it’s personal.
“I wanted it to be embroidered with something so specific to the people who made it.
“Ending a summer comedy with a conversation about death is one thing, and then also putting home videos from people’s lives, that are personal to these people, felt like another movement towards making it something that could not have been made by any other group of people.”