(Left to right:) Emerald Fennell and Greta Gerwig in 2023.Photo:Jon Kopaloff/Variety via Getty; Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty
Jon Kopaloff/Variety via Getty; Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty
This Barbie is predicting thatGreta Gerwigwill be remembered as “one of the greats.”
Actor-filmmakerEmerald Fennell, who stars as Midge in the hit filmBarbie, tells PEOPLE she admires its writer-director “so enormously.”
“I think in 50 years' time she’ll be the name at the top of the list,” says Fennell, 38. “She’s so exceptional.”
And if Gerwig’s past Oscar-nominated work directingLady BirdandLittle Womenweren’t enough, Fennell says her first read of theBarbiescript (cowritten with Gerwig’s partnerNoah Baumbach) confirmed the assessment.
Will Ferrell and Greta Gerwig filming “Barbie”.Snorlax/MEGA
“It’s the best script I’ve ever read, ever,” Fennell remembers. “I was like, Holy sh–. This is so good. It’s so unique, it’s so beautiful. It’s so cleverly written. There’s so much stuff in the script alone that tells you everything about the movie.”
“Boys and men of a certain type have had their childhoods pandered to, catered to, beautifully crafted, billions of dollars spent on them. And that’s great, that’s wonderful, that’s fine. And they are used to this experience. But for the first time ever, it was somebody, it was Greta, Margot, all of these people saying, ‘The things that you love too, we care about and are real and valid and worth taking time over.’”
That’s why the self-described “Barbie fanatic” found seeing the colorful Barbieland set in person for the first time “incredibly moving,” recalls Fennell. “I realized then that nobody had ever cared about my childhood before. Nobody had ever cared about the things that we all cared about before.”
She even “got a little bit teary, because I recognized everything,” she admits. “And I’m British, I don’t cry, really, in even the most dire circumstances.”
Emerald Fennell in 2023.Gareth Cattermole/Getty
Gareth Cattermole/Getty
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“Promising Young Womanwas very much for me about why — not just women exclusively, but the stuff of girls, the stuff of girlish childhood, let’s say — why we never take those things seriously,” explains Fennell. “Why there is a way that serious movies look. Serious movies are brown and gray and serious, and frivolous movies are pink and beautiful and frothy. And that’s just the way it is.”
Gerwig, she continues, “and people like Margot, everyone at LuckyChap, what we were trying to do withPromising Young Womanis coming up and saying, ‘No. F— you. This is really important. Just because you don’t think it is, that’s not real.’”
It’s why audiences have flocked toBarbieand why it will be remembered as “a masterpiece,” as Fennell puts it. “I’m so grateful to even just be in it, waving in the background, just for a second. It’s worth it, because what an extraordinary work of art.”
For any fans wondering, Fennell confirms that yes, Gerwig castThe Crownactress as the quaint, quiet Midge because she’d appeared in the public eye pregnant. (Fennell shares two young sons with producerChris Vernon.)
Emerald Fennell in 2021.@quillemons/Instagram
“Because I’d beenpregnant makingPromising Young Woman, and then pregnant to accept an Oscar, it seemed as though I was some permanently pregnant woman,” she says with a laugh.
“I could see how unbelievably hilarious it was for me to then, having just stopped being pregnant, put on a pregnancy suit and be pregnant again,” she adds. “Because Midge has been pregnant for 50 years, God bless her! Poor f—ing thing.”
Fennell’s new movieSaltburn, starringBarry KeoghanandJacob Elordi, is in theaters now.
source: people.com
