Creating That Unmistakably ‘Barbie’ World With an Original Yet Faithful Production Design

Audiences obsessed with Greta Gerwig’s critically acclaimed blockbuster Barbie may think they’re revisiting the same Barbie Dreamhouses they played with as children. Certainly, as “Stereotypical” Barbie (Margot Robbie) floats from the top of her Dreamhouse to her pink Barbie car, the houses surrounding her certainly look like giant recreations of Mattel Dreamhouses consumers have been able to purchase for decades.

In reality, none of the Dreamhouses represented onscreen are direct reproductions of the children’s toys. Sorry to burst your bubbles. Blame the brilliant creativity of production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer and Mattel’s willingness for the Barbie creative team to play with their iconic brand.

“We were lucky enough to be given free rein by Mattel. We were not recreating a Mattel Dreamhouse. It was our interpretation of a Dreamhouse for our film, for Margot’s character, and for Greta [Gerwig],” Greenwood explained. “So it certainly feels like a Dreamhouse, and it has that effect on people. ‘Oh my god! I had to dream house like that!’ But actually, it’s a refinement of many things, including looking at the real Dreamhouses. How do they work? What are their scales? What makes them toy?”

Greenwood and Spencer frequently referred back to Gerwig’s screenplay for specific direction and inspiration on their design. In the real world, they referred to Mid-Century Modern and Palm Springs architecture to establish Dreamhouses that would reflect the sunny perfection seen early in the film. One attribute of the central Barbie Dreamhouse in which Robbie’s Barbie lives was that it was positioned within a cul-de-sac that actually formed the dot on the “I” in “Barbieland.” It allowed Greenwood and Spencer to open up the world in ways they wouldn’t traditionally be able to in a film where houses are more realistically aligned on a street.

Plus, none of the houses had walls, so you could see right through all of them. Other fun rules established by the Barbie creative team included the lack of direct sunlight, the lack of water, and zero black or chrome fixtures. They would encounter new challenges along the way and solve them with ingenuity, just like Production Designer Barbie and Set Decorator Barbie would.

“You discover one thing, and then you discover the next. Certainly having the rules helped,” Spencer added.

A significant challenge poised by Gerwig’s screenplay happens about halfway through the film when Robbie’s Barbie returns to Barbieland to find that Ken (Ryan Gosling) has returned from the real world with a skewed sense of masculinity. Suddenly, Spencer’s set decoration needed to feature less of the sunny simplicity of the traditional Barbie world, replaced with palette-breaking colors and objects.

One of the first questions Spencer asked of Gerwig was if she really wanted the Ken-influenced world to really be an ugly place aesthetically. Gerwig insisted that there was no such thing as too much. And thus was born Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House replete with 22 televisions.

Yup, twenty-two televisions…

“She said ugly go ugly, and that was a huge breakthrough. We knew now we could introduce everything from the real world. We could introduce all the black leather we wanted, all the chrome, everything like that, but with a twist,” Spencer related. “It’s like your worst younger brother or your worst boyfriend. The other thing is that [Ken] didn’t even bother getting rid of Barbie’s stuff. He just shoved it to the side and then applied things.”

Another major location within Barbieland perhaps shouldn’t be called “ugly,” although it definitely doesn’t follow the traditional sense of “Stereotypical” Barbie beauty. Kate McKinnon’s “Weird” Barbie lived in a world completely of her own making, and Greenwood and Spencer’s background in theater and character-driven designs helped flesh out exactly how “Weird” Barbie’s house would appear.

Honestly, it was perhaps the easiest design Greenwood needed to realize for the film. She instantly understood, through references in the script and through her own intuition, how “Weird” Barbie’s house would look.

“You’re taking the Dreamhouse, and it’s cockeyed in the same way that ‘Weird’ Barbie is cockeyed. There are no right angles in her house. It’s all askew. It’s still a Barbie Dreamhouse, but it’s gone off kilter,” Greenwood explained. “She’s like the Boo Radley of Barbieland. They’re all really scared of this thing when there’s nothing to be scared of. The house is hiding in plain sight overlooking Barbieland, kind of like the ‘Psycho’ house.”

Barbie is now available on home video and will stream on MAX starting December 15.