Greta Gerwig is opening up about Hollywood.
The 40-year-old Barbie director spoke out in the latest issue of Variety, out now.
During the conversation, Greta spoke out about the success of her hit movie, America Ferrera‘s memorable monologue, Hollywood post-#MeToo and the use of intimacy coordinators, and more.
Find out what Greta Gerwig had to say…
On the success of Barbie:
“God, when did it sort of kick in? I always had a hope that it would connect. I had a sense that it might. But Barbie doesn’t fit neatly into a preordained category. We had these hopeful-looking metrics, but no one knew what they meant. It wasn’t until the end of the second weekend that I thought, Oh, this is going well. I mean, Wonder Woman was hugely successful, but superheroes exist in a different bubble.”
“Everything I know about the movie’s success is an anecdote. Apparently, there was a very high percentage of people who said they couldn’t remember the last movie they saw in a movie theater.”
On America Ferrera’s Barbie monologue:
“It does not exist as it does without America. It’s hers by right, more than anyone else…That scene still really touches me. I see some of my friends’ teenage girls who don’t think they’re good enough, but they’re so beautiful and so smart and you just want them to know.”
On standards post-#MeToo:
“[I'm] luckier than a lot of people in terms of not having truly traumatic things happen…That being said, there’s plenty of stuff that happened in my life, when I look back at it. I’m like, wait a minute. That was not okay. Just a million little things. It almost didn’t register. Which might be generational, you know? I think one substantive change is intimacy coordinators. They make perfect sense. It’s like a fight choreographer. Nobody would ever say, ‘Just take these swords and see what happens, just duel a little and see where the spirit takes you.’ That’s insane. Aside from being a woman, the parallel world I see is getting stuck in some whirlpool of development where you never get out, you never get the thing made or find the right champions. I’ve been extremely lucky that I’ve managed to be supported by the system and not eroded by the system.”
She also revealed another Barbie scene she had to fight for.
