Michael Cera personally emailed Greta Gerwig to star in ‘Barbie’. The result: a Zoom call and a key role!
Michael Cera plays the clumsy, one-of-a-kind Allan in Greta Gerwig’s hit film Barbie. But without a last-minute Zoom call with the director, he might not be part of the film.
“It was kind of a last minute casting“, said Michael Cera in a video interview with GQ (via Variety/Yahoo) made before the actors’ strike. “My manager got a call to check on my availability and he called me and he said, ‘I got a call about this movie. It’s the Barbie movie. Greta Gerwig is directing it and it’s been filming in London for about four months, so I told them you probably wouldn’t want to do it because you probably wouldn’t want to go to London.’”
However, the actor was very interested: “I said what ? Call them back!’ […] How can I not? I have to do it !”. So he took matters into his own hands.
I kind of got Greta’s email address, I think through a mutual friend of ours, and sent her an email like, ‘Can I be in the movie ? Can I play this role? And she said, ‘Let’s zoom now. Here is a Zoom link, I will be there for the next hour.” So she was just hanging out on Zoom and said, ‘Click the link when you’re ready.’ And then we talked about it and it all happened very quickly from there.
In Barbie, Michael Cera plays Ken’s shy sidekick. Although there are countless iterations of Ken, there is only one Allan.
“Allan is a sad figure. He’s just a person who doesn’t really belong in the world”, explained the actor. As a reminder, the character is based on a real Mattel doll, marketed between 1931 and 2014 which, thanks to the success of the film, is now resold at cost price.
WHY MATTEL REMOVED ALLAN FROM SALE?
According to Michael Cerahe “just didn’t sell. The world just didn’t need Ken to have a friend… Barbie is fine, we can have a lot more Barbies here, and her friends. But we have Ken and we don’t need to go any further in that direction. So Allan sort of fell through the cracks.”
Barbie recently overtook Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight as the highest-grossing domestic release in Warner Bros. history, grossing over $537 million in the United States and Canada. The film also collected more than $1.2 billion worldwide and stayed on the top step of the podium for four consecutive weeks.
Barbie is still available at your nearest movie theater.
Discover Michael Cera’s interview in VO below: