As 'Barbie' continues to take the box office by storm, moviegoers are wearing their favorite shades of pink and immersing themselves in the toy world. The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Production Designer Sarah Greenwood and Set Decorator Katie Spencer, the Oscar-nominated team behind movies such as 'Darkest Hour,' 'Anna Karenina,' 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Beauty and the Beast.' They opened up about the creation of "Barbieland," including the dreamhouse, from which Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and the cast filmed the Greta Gerwig-directed hit.
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00:00 I have a real passion for Weird Barbie and the Weird Barbie house.
00:05 I love that.
00:07 As Barbie continues to take the box office by storm, moviegoers are wearing their favorite
00:12 shades of pink and immersing themselves in the toy world.
00:15 To learn more, we spoke with production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer,
00:19 the Oscar-nominated team behind movies such as Darkest Hour, Anna Karenina, Pride and
00:24 Prejudice and Beauty and the Beast.
00:26 They opened up about the creation of Barbie Land, including the Dream House, from which
00:30 Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and the cast filmed the Greta Gerwig directed hit.
00:34 Can I come to your house tonight?
00:35 Sure.
00:36 I don't have anything big planned, just a giant blowout party with all the Barbies and
00:40 planned choreography and a bespoke song.
00:41 You should stop by.
00:42 So cool.
00:43 One of the first things we did was go out and buy a Dream House and a couple of Barbies.
00:48 Yeah.
00:49 And that's...
00:50 I started playing.
00:51 I started playing.
00:52 I didn't know it was a Dream House from any particular era, but it was an interpretation
00:56 of a Dream House that hopefully encapsulated the whole feel of them.
01:01 So that when people do say, "Oh, that's my Dream House."
01:04 It feels like the Dream House.
01:05 It feels like it is, but it's nobody's Dream House.
01:07 Well, it's Barbie's Dream House.
01:08 Well, it's Barbie's Dream House.
01:09 And Ken.
01:10 And also, it's Barbie Land.
01:12 It's a world that doesn't exist.
01:14 So you had to create the world and what the world was.
01:18 And you had to create the world in a world that has no elements, has no air, has no water,
01:25 no electricity.
01:26 And you're kind of going, "Well, what does it have?"
01:29 So you're trying to work it out.
01:31 What makes it toy and what makes them dolls?
01:34 So what you might see is something quite simple, but to arrive at that simplicity, I found
01:41 very, very philosophically and intellectually challenging.
01:44 Yeah.
01:45 Actually, it was really hard.
01:46 Hi, Barbie.
01:47 Hi, Ken.
01:48 The reason why we built everything is because it's...
01:52 And built everything as opposed to doing a lot of CGI when we built miniatures as well,
01:58 which gave us our outer world.
01:59 It was because Greta very much wanted the tangibility of it.
02:05 What children, when they play, they touch.
02:09 And it's like everything...
02:11 You can feel it.
02:12 You can feel that it's in camera and it wants to feel like a giant toy.
02:16 And also, it helps the actors immensely, I think, as well, and everybody else.
02:21 Hi, I'm Weird Barbie.
02:22 I am in the splits.
02:23 I have a funky haircut and I smell like basement.
02:25 Oh my God, I had a Weird Barbie.
02:28 I have a real passion for Weird Barbie and the Weird Barbie house.
02:34 I love that.
02:35 And if I were to take something home from Weird Barbie's house, then I would be taking
02:39 home her cat.
02:40 One of the specific references for Weird Barbie was a literary reference.
02:45 So, you know when they describe in Killer Mockingbird, the Boo Radley house, and don't
02:51 go near the Boo Radley house.
02:52 And you get the feeling that if the Barbies were walking past Weird Barbie, they'd be
02:55 going, "Don't look over there.
02:56 Don't look, don't look."
02:59 And then one of the other things was the psycho house that's on the top of the hill, it's
03:05 looking up and it's got that shaped roof and everything.
03:08 And then that led on to...
03:10 Are you going to take the whole house?
03:11 I'm going to take the whole house.
03:13 And then it led on to Weird Barbie's ambulance, which to my mind was like the creepy coop
03:19 out of the Wacky Races.
03:21 And I think that when they designed the creepy coop out of the Wacky Races, they looked at
03:25 the weird, they looked at psycho.
03:26 So you kind of got this full circle.
03:28 So I would take home Weird Barbie's ambulance.
03:31 Well, I tell you what was difficult was the swimming pools, right?
03:41 So the swimming pools, and it's like, you know, like David Hockney's swimming pools
03:45 and all the lovely pools you have in LA that we never have in London because we're all
03:49 indoors.
03:50 So it's this beautiful painted, scenically painted, and then we poured on this resin,
03:55 this kind of clear resin that would give us our undulated surface.
03:59 And the first time we did it, it looked great.
04:02 We poured on the resin and the resin, when it reacts with itself, got so hot, it kind
04:07 of bleached and burned all the scenic art underneath.
04:11 So we had to chip it all out and start again.
04:13 That was a pain.
04:14 Humans only have one ending.
04:15 Get that Barbie!
04:16 Ideas live forever.
04:16 [Music]
04:21 forever.
04:22 [MUSIC PLAYING]