10 months ago
38 ARTICLE AD
One of the highlights of this awards season so far has been America Ferrera receiving the See Her award from the Critics Choice. At this point I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say (except perhaps to Kevin Costner) that America’s monologue on the expectations put on women is the linchpin of the film. It’s the beating heart underneath all the technicolor high jinx we see play out in Barbie Land and the State of Los Angeles. And America delivers it beautifully, so it was especially nice to see her recognized with the See Her award given that she’s looking more and more like a dark horse for a supporting actress nomination, but we’ll know for sure on Tuesday. America posted a video of her acceptance speech to her Instagram — yes girl, celebrate yourself! — and Sharon Stone chimed in with a very unexpected congratulations: in thanking the Barbie team for their “courage and endurance” in making the film, Sharon revealed that she tried to pitch a Barbie movie back in the 90s… only to be laughed out the door. Le sigh, the patriarchy.
Sharon Stone has revealed that she once attempted to pitch a “Barbie” movie to a Hollywood studio during the 1990s and was laughed out of the room. What a difference a couple of decades makes, as Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s “Barbie” opened last year and earned a staggering $1.4 billion to become the top-grossing film of 2023 and the biggest earner in Warner Bros.’ studio history.
“I was laughed out [of] the studio when I came [with] the Barbie idea in the ‘90s [with] the support of the head of Barbie,” Stone wrote in a comment to America Ferrera on Instagram, where the latter shared her powerful acceptance speech from the Critics Choice Awards. “How far we’ve come. Thank you ladies for your courage and endurance.”
Ferrera is a supporting actor in “Barbie” and was honored with the See Her award at the Critics Choice Awards. During her speech, she paid tribute to Gerwig and thanked her “for proving through your incredible mastery as a filmmaker that women’s stories have no difficulty achieving cinematic greatness and box-office history at the same time, and that unabashedly telling female stories does not diminish your powers, it expands them.”
Stone is far from the only actor to try and fail to get a “Barbie” movie off the ground. Before Gerwig and Robbie perfected their take at Warner Bros., both Amy Schumer and Anne Hathaway attempted a “Barbie” movie at Sony Pictures.
I mean, am I surprised to hear that studios didn’t want to make a Barbie movie back in the 90s, no. Not surprising, but still infuriating. When I think of all the iterations we’ve seen of Batman over the decades, and in essentially the same costume each time, I want to fake hurl like the Barbies do at Margot Robbie’s flat feet. Yes, I know that Batman debuted 20 years before Barbie. Batty Boy is coming up on 85 years old in May, and by a conservative estimate has around 12 live action films. Barbie, by contrast, will be 65 on March 9 and has… one film.
Photos credit: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon and Getty
